sexual liberation without consent is rape culture
January 16, 2018 11:47 AM Subscribe

Aziz Ansari was accused of coercing a woman (content warning: graphic description of sexual assault) into having sex with him. People are having very different reactions to this news.

Last Saturday, an anonymous photographer accused Aziz Ansari of repeatedly coercing her to have sex with him in spite of her numerous attempts to signal disinterest. Ansari has since issued a statement denying that it was assault but repeating his support for the MeToo movement.

Ansari is known for being a vocal feminist. He is also much lauded as being one of the few people of color to be given a platform on which to express the real lived experiences of folks like him. But both his feminism and his speaking for PoC were not without criticism.

On the one hand, some people say this is an overreaction - that Ansari's actions are normal, that any suggestion he act otherwise would require him to have psychic powers, and this whole thing is just a subversive ploy to derail the #MeToo movement.

Others, however, have a different idea:

The Aziz Ansari story is ordinary. That’s why we have to talk about it.

Perhaps what is especially threatening about Grace’s story is that it involves a situation in which many men can imagine themselves. But this is a reason to discuss it more, not to sweep it under the rug. Listening to Grace doesn’t mean deciding all men should go to prison, or should lose their jobs. It does mean admitting that many men behave in exactly the ways their culture tells them to behave. It means asking men to recognize that and do better, and it means changing the culture so that badgering and pressuring women into sex is deplored, not endorsed. None of this will happen if we refuse to reckon with stories like Grace’s.

not that bad

This is a normal sex encounter. The women that you're seeing scoff at her? They aren't scoffing because they think a guy would never do that. They're scoffing because they believe every single word she said.

This is a common, normal hookup. A shitty, painful hookup where Grace's comfort and pleasure were like #7 on the priority list.

Our normal is awful.

Here’s why Aziz Ansari’s behaviour matters

As Guardian writer Jessica Valenti put it on Twitter , enthusiastic consent “goes against everything we’ve been taught about sex”. Men are encouraged to push our boundaries, taught that women often “play hard to get” and may need “convincing” into sex. We’re seen as gatekeepers – sometimes not particularly into sex, but willing to give in to it given the right circumstances. Our limits are tested time and time again; sometimes a hand slowly moving back to the place we just removed it from, others a whispered “you know you want to”. The number of women sharing this story along with their own similar experiences is telling: how many of us has this happened to? And how many of the men who committed these acts would ever realise that they’ve committed a form of assault?

What the Aziz Ansari allegation teaches us about consent

Many are operating under the assumption that the movement for consent has found us in a place with equal power when it comes to intimacy. It has not. Men are taught to be assertive in almost every situation, from the boardroom to the bedroom. Women are taught to be apologetic, and we find ourselves internalizing misogyny.

Jameela Jamil Encourages Enthusiastic Consent in the Wake of Aziz Ansari ‘Cluserf*ck’

“Our society, the internet, and even our most mainstream media, constantly perpetuate the idea that men do not need to worry about what our needs and boundaries are,” Jamil says. “They just need technical consent, however that consent is acquired. CONSENT SHOULDN’T BE THE GOLD STANDARD. That should be the basic foundation. Built upon that foundation should be fun, mutual passion, equal arousal, interest and enthusiasm.” To that end, Jamil encourages women to speak up about their needs during sex (as long as they feel safe doing so), and for men to “actually realise and come to terms with the fact that porn is a bullshit fantasy and learning sex from pornography is like learning how to drive from The Fast and the Furious. A terrible idea.”

posted by runt (488 comments total) 83 users marked this as a favorite

Most of the arguments-against I've seen have pointed to the whole "but she stayed over and gave him a blow job the next morning."

Has anyone tried the "trauma makes you do funny things" or "stockholm syndrome" yet? I want to see if that works.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:50 AM on January 16, 2018 [14 favorites]

Great, much better and more comprehensive than the FPP I was constructing. Just gonna copy and paste what I had going, in case it adds anything constructive.

Among the latest allegations of sexual assault comes a story about one of Hollywood's most notable feminist allies: I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life.

Throughout the course of her short time in the apartment, she says she used verbal and non-verbal cues to indicate how uncomfortable and distressed she was. “Most of my discomfort was expressed in me pulling away and mumbling. I know that my hand stopped moving at some points,” she said. “I stopped moving my lips and turned cold.”

Ansari soon issued a response:

"We went out to dinner, and afterwards we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual. The next day, I got a text from her saying that although ‘it may have seemed okay,’ upon further reflection, she felt uncomfortable. It was true that everything did seem okay to me, so when I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned. I took her words to heart and responded privately after taking the time to process what she had said."

What Aziz Ansari’s “Apology” Says About How Men View Their Encounters With Women

The revelations, however, did not (unsurprisingly) come without blowback.

The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari
Aziz Ansari is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader.
Babe’s Aziz Ansari piece was a gift to anyone who wants to derail #MeToo
Ashleigh Banfield Blasts Aziz Ansari Accuser For ‘Reckless’ Sexual Assault Claim

What is Babe? Meet the site that published the Aziz Ansari allegation

According to Babe's editors, Grace's story deserves attention in part because the personal encounter contradicts Ansari's image. "Ansari is a guy who has built a very powerful and profitable brand on the back of respecting women and calling out retrograde douchebag culture, and on parsing the nuances of modern dating. We felt there was a strong public interest in publishing the account of someone who says his private treatment of Grace didn't align with his public statements and public work," Mitzali wrote.

With Rupert Murdoch’s Help, Tab Media Targets Young and Cheeky on Campus

Tab uses traditional journalism tools like Freedom of Information Act filings, door-to-door sleuthing and libel training. But it also digs deep into Reddit, excavates meme chains and cultivates gossip. Tab Media has two parts: The Tab, which publishes the college-centric content, and Babe, a website for young women that specializes in “good news reporting, trash trends, personal stories” and stories about men with certain unappealing qualities and “the pettiest celebrity drama.”

posted by Christ, what an asshole at 11:53 AM on January 16, 2018 [17 favorites]

There isn't anything confusing about enthusiastic consent. The main issues that some people have with it tend to be:

1. That enthusiastic consent makes it more likely that they go home without sating their urges, and
2. The implications of enthusiastic consent cause people to not like who they are in the cold light of day.

As a grown man who believes in enthusiastic consent, I have little patience for either.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:53 AM on January 16, 2018 [78 favorites]

Some decades ago, a woman described a date gone wrong to me as "I felt really uncomfortable, so I gave him a blowjob to get rid of him."

From his perspective, that wasn't rape, he was probably none the wiser. She didn't describe it as rape. Even if it isn't legally rape, we should view it as such.

I hope that situations like this can help us reframe consent not as "what did they say or do in the moment", but as "how will they describe this encounter in private to a friend in two weeks."

It's going to take a huge shift in culture, after all much of our economic system is based on questionable consent ("... look around the table, if you don't see the sucker, you're the sucker."), but holy shit that we're even having this discussion shows how fucked up we are.
posted by straw at 11:56 AM on January 16, 2018 [28 favorites]

I continue to be annoyed, and sometimes outraged, at men who think feminism means "women are awesome" and not "women are allowed to tell me no."
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:57 AM on January 16, 2018 [150 favorites]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS!! <3

This is such an important conversation.
posted by Dressed to Kill at 11:59 AM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

Hey, anyone remember that thread where we were talking about Aziz writing a relationship book and I mentioned that while I thought he was a funny guy a lot of his humor also leaned heavily on fedora-squad Nice Guy Reddit-bait bullshit and a bunch of people lined up to let me know that I was wrong.

No? It’s right here if you missed it.

I'm getting real tired of vindication coming exclusively as the result of people being shitty. It would be nice to be pleasantly surprised now and then.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 12:01 PM on January 16, 2018 [61 favorites]

This situation happened to me. I even explicitly told the guy beforehand that I did not want to engage in sexual activity. The guy initiated, i blew him off. He did it again, I told him to wait, and then just kept going because I'd given in.

Let me make this perfectly clear: these men know what they are doing. This is not an accident, this is malicious disregard of my and women's wishes in order to be sexually satisfied. I did what every single mefite warns against - I contacted him later down the line and demanded an explanation. And you know what? He gave it to me. I got it, in writing, that he knew I was giving signals, he knew I didn't really want to, and he continued anyway because eventually i'd give in. Men rely on this to abuse and exploit women without getting caught. It's absolutely foul. it took me a long time (and I'm still working on it) to recognize what happened to me as rape. It's the worst thin that's ever happened. I got pregnant that night, and I'm still in debt because of having to pay for the abortion out of pocket. All men* benefit from women's collective fear of saying no.

*yes. all fucking men. this includes you, specifically, that is doubting me. especially you.
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:01 PM on January 16, 2018 [192 favorites]

I've read the original article and some of the think pieces and... I don't know. Maybe I'm just an asshole? My only thought is that if a man described the excruciating intimate details of a sexual encounter they didn't enjoy people would be outraged. I don't doubt that the pressure the original author felt was genuine but this just does not in any way seem to me equivalent to a sexual assault, and it seems gross and hypocritical to air the salacious details of this bad date in the open.
posted by the_querulous_night at 12:02 PM on January 16, 2018 [21 favorites]

I don't doubt that the pressure the original author felt was genuine but this just does not in any way seem to me equivalent to a sexual assault,

But that's exactly what needs to be talked about... she had sex and she didn't want to, how is that not assault?
posted by Huck500 at 12:06 PM on January 16, 2018 [21 favorites]

But that's exactly what needs to be talked about... she had sex and she didn't want to, how is that not assault?

I would really suggest reading through the events of what took place.
posted by P.o.B. at 12:07 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

I feel slightly embarrassed when someone I dismissed as a misogynistic asshole fratboy the first time I heard him on public radio turns out to actually be an asshole. 'cause I don't want to believe that you can judge people based on a minute of highly-produced spoken word content. But. . . why is anybody surprised? "Sexist, arrogant, gender-essentialist stand-up treats women badly in real life too" is a pretty dull headline.
posted by eotvos at 12:07 PM on January 16, 2018 [12 favorites]

and it seems gross and hypocritical to air the salacious details of this bad date in the open.

If she didn't want to have sex, its not a bad date... its rape.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:07 PM on January 16, 2018 [26 favorites]

My only thought is that if a man described the excruciating intimate details of a sexual encounter they didn't enjoy people would be outraged.

If the man was talking about a sexual encounter that they felt pressured into, I very much doubt it. Stop glossing over what happened with euphemistic weasel words - this wasn't "he sucked in bed", but "he used societal pressure to push me into sexual activity that I really wasn't on board for." That's a vastly different situation.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:07 PM on January 16, 2018 [61 favorites]

David Klion on twitter: The Aziz Ansari story is a good litmus test for who sees sexual misconduct as a strictly legal question and who is concerned about improving the overall culture surrounding sex and dating. It's also many times more relevant to the average person's experience than, say, Weinstein.
What's disturbing about the Ansari story is that he knows precisely what lines not to cross to avoid doing anything illegal, and how to walk right up to them, and how to cover for himself if it's received badly. Way too many guys think this way. This really is the culture.
To get beyond this, we're going to need space for a more honest and open discussion about how men... not the most dangerous predators, but perfectly average, entitled, self-centered men... are socialized to think about sex, and about women.
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:08 PM on January 16, 2018 [137 favorites]

I did not view this as assault.
posted by shoesietart at 12:09 PM on January 16, 2018 [16 favorites]

I did not view this as assault.

Then you should be asking yourself why.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:10 PM on January 16, 2018 [53 favorites]

I do.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:11 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

I did not view this as assault.

This is part of the problem, as outlined clearly and in great detail in several of the accompanying links.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:11 PM on January 16, 2018 [42 favorites]

I’ve realized in the last few weeks especially that’s the men who are the loudest about how awesome they are, and who loudly direct their professions of feminist awesomeness at women....are pretty reliably terrible, in ways that are insidious and so hurtful after the fact. Even when there isn’t sex involved, but especially when it is. And even when it doesn’t look like sex is involved, it usually is.

I do not want you to tell me how great you are. I want you to not constantly be askin me to tell me what you’re doing right. I want you to tell the men in your life that sexist bullshit is bullshit. I want you to hire women at fair wages and promote women to positions of power. I want you to say in the room “jack, Susan wasn’t done speaking. Let’s get her complete comment on the record before we move on.” I want you to quash rape “jokes” and “locker room talk” in every circle. I want men to be intersectional in their feminism, with no more white knight bullshit and no more advice that I should avoid certain neighborhoods or dress modestly. I never want to hear a guy tell me that they don’t know any guys who do shitty shit like this. The guys you know are doing shit like this. Listen to women. And then speak the fuck ho.

And I don’t want you to fucking complain about how uncomfortable it is to quash rape jokes. How hard it is to think of yourself as a ‘bad guy.’ I’m not saying you’re a bad guy. I’m saying if you don’t make better choices I willlllll know you’re a bad guy.

Because I promise you, it’s nowhere near as uncomfortable as being raped and it’s worlds less uncomfortable than hearing people talk about something traumatic as though it’s trivial and funny.

(And I do contend, there are a few rape jokes I like. Ever Mainard and Wanda Sykes each have a bit that I can get behind. Note that they’re both women.)
posted by bilabial at 12:13 PM on January 16, 2018 [85 favorites]

Can I just jump in say that, frankly, it's irrelevant if you think it's assault? What's important here is that Grace, Myself, and literally tens of thousands of women have been in situations like this do feel like it's assault. Do feel violated. Pulling this quote from above because I doubt you read it, shosietar,:

"Listening to Grace ...means asking men to recognize that and do better, and it means changing the culture so that badgering and pressuring women into sex is deplored, not endorsed. None of this will happen if we refuse to reckon with stories like Grace’s."
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:13 PM on January 16, 2018 [85 favorites]

If you're going to put one of your body parts into somebody else's orifice, "they didn't say 'no' clearly enough for me to be certain" is not the threshold you want to shoot for. I really don't see how this is difficult, but assholes keep disappointing me.

*Deletes Master of None from Netflix queue*
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:17 PM on January 16, 2018 [65 favorites]

Sexual Coercion

Sexual coercion lies on the continuum of sexual violence. For many individuals, understanding what is meant by sexual coercion is difficult and confusing. Sexual coercion involves the act of using psychological/emotional pressure, alcohol, drugs, or force to engage in sexual contact with a person against his or her will. It often involves persistent attempts to have sexual contact after the other person has already refused (post refusal persistence). Rather than through physical force, persuasion through psychological/emotional pressure is often the tactic of sexual coercion utilized by the person trying to make sexual contact with someone who is refusing that contact. Sexual coercion by design of the person seeking the sexual contact is often subtle, but it is highly manipulative, cunning and often directed at possible vulnerabilities of the intended victim. Many individuals erroneously interpret sexual coercion as “joking”, flirtation, or innocent behavior, but it is a type of sexual violence utilized to obtain sexual contact with a person who is not willing and does not give permission.

California's Yes Means Yes Law:

"Affirmative consent" means affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity. It is the responsibility of each person involved in the sexual activity to ensure that he or she has the affirmative consent of the other or others to engage in the sexual activity. Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent.

posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:17 PM on January 16, 2018 [29 favorites]

I must confess that the reason this anecdote took a hold on me is because I can recall incidents where I was the Aziz in the story. Growing up, I fell victim to the toxic notion that the "measure of a man" is how much poon he can slay. So naturally, I looked up to these alpha douchebags who would give me "tips" like, "No just means 'not yet.'" "Meet resistance with persistence." "All women want it, they just don't want to feel like a slut." It's embarrassing redpill horseshit, and it turned out a lot of these dudes ended up getting hit with rape charges, harassment complaints, and divorces.

I'm glad this story came to light. I have a lot of reaching out to make up for...
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 12:18 PM on January 16, 2018 [30 favorites]

I read this article the night it dropped, before everyone was talking about it, which was awful because all I wanted to do was talk about all the bad feels it made me feel and that meant I had to link my sisters to it so they could feel the bad feels too.

About halfway through the article, I think it was when they got to "the claw," I felt such overwhelming hatred and contempt for Aziz. It was shocking, actually, how suddenly I could begin detesting a person I've always liked.

Then I got to the end when they called it sexual assault, and I scoffed. Okay, Aziz is a huge jerk, I really hate him now and never want to see his stupid face again, but that wasn't assault.

I thought, it's not sexual assault because if that's sexual assault I've ben sexually assaulted more times than I even care to remember.

Then I thought... Oh.

Oh.

Yeah.

No one wants to feel that bad feeling, which is why so many women are scoffing too.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 12:19 PM on January 16, 2018 [238 favorites]

I would really suggest reading through the events of what took place.

I did read it, thoroughly, and the key detail is even quoted in the post:

Throughout the course of her short time in the apartment, she says she used verbal and non-verbal cues to indicate how uncomfortable and distressed she was. “Most of my discomfort was expressed in me pulling away and mumbling. I know that my hand stopped moving at some points,” she said. “I stopped moving my lips and turned cold.”

If a potential sexual partner is pulling away and mumbling, repeatedly, that means they don't want to have sex with you.
posted by Huck500 at 12:19 PM on January 16, 2018 [41 favorites]

“It wasn’t illegal” is hardly a standard for behavior. Otherwise you’d be fine with earning a minimum wage, getting no benefits, living in slum housing....wait...this is sounding like a parallel problem!

We are asking men to do better. We are not asking for any rules lawyering of what the minimum expectation should be. At any rate, not haranguing women for sex acts is pretty damn near the bare minimum.
posted by bilabial at 12:20 PM on January 16, 2018 [30 favorites]

I don't have a lot of patience for the whole "is not legally rape" thing. Pestering for sex is totally gross and the power differential here - on multiple axes, she was twenty two for gods sake - is way out of line. How could he not be aware she would feel pressured for sex?

Yeah he's not Weinstein, but in many ways this displays a far more common sense of entitlement and chauvinism.
posted by smoke at 12:20 PM on January 16, 2018 [25 favorites]

I will try to tread carefully. I understand the concept of enthusiastic consent, I understand the way that social pressure and circumstance can weigh on us. But to foist this as an assault, as a refusal by the man alone to stop and ensure that the other party is enthusiastic at every stage seems to me somewhat unfair and at odds with what many women indicate they look for in a sexual partner. I'm rereading Grace's account and I understand that she verbally indicated she wasn't sure that she was comfortable, and that she didn't want to feel forced. Taking the account at face value, Aziz comes off like a jerk. Is being a jerk the same thing as force?

I guess my main question is, if this is entirely the responsibility of the man every time, how is this not infantilizing women? At what point is this downplaying the agency and power of women to stand up and say no?

I know many people have different experiences and views on this, so I'm not afraid to just be told that I'm wrong, or being overly charitable. A mod already deleted at least one comment directed at me - I don't need the kid gloves, if people have harsh truths I want to hear them. Is it unreasonable for me to think that sometimes people just misread a situation? Is it unreasonable to ask that people be direct when they sense they want an encounter to stop?
posted by the_querulous_night at 12:22 PM on January 16, 2018 [33 favorites]

If a potential sexual partner is pulling away and mumbling, repeatedly, that means they don't want to have sex with you.

It could mean something else - they're trying to overcome past trauma; they are so nervous they're distracted by random other thoughts - but it's definitely time to have a direct, careful conversation about what they think is going on, and what they want to happen. The proper assessment is definitely not, "oh, she's not screaming at me or hitting me with weapons, so this must be consent."
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:22 PM on January 16, 2018 [30 favorites]

I would really suggest reading through the events of what took place.

I actually did. And one part that stuck out at me is that she actually flat-out said "I don't want to do this" and "I'm uncomfortable" and he kept at it and wore her down.

That's non-consent, dude.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:23 PM on January 16, 2018 [88 favorites]

Even if this doesn't clear the bar to being "sexual assault" in a court-prosecutable sense, one has to admit that this sort of thing is just really gross.

He's whining and bargaining and wheedling, interrupting downtime with a gross kiss, and more.

She sets a pretty firm line about what she'd like to do, he keeps asking how he can cross it. Even if he's asking rather than just crossing it, it's still gross.

This is the dude who was supposed to be the "boys, do better in your dates" comedian, and it turns out he's just as bad as the people he talked down to.

No, he's not another Harvey Weinstein. No, this isn't career-ending. But it doesn't mean it's not worthy of our attention. It doesn't mean he's not hypocritical for supporting #metoo when this is his manner of behavior.
posted by explosion at 12:23 PM on January 16, 2018 [28 favorites]

I've always had this fantasy, I mean it's really silly and impossible of course, but this fantasy that I could get to know a guy, and like go to his house and watch movies and snuggle on the couch. Flirt and laugh and become friends, like really friends. Over a period of time that maybe even includes months? And we actually figure out if we have deeper feelings for each other BEFORE having sex? It's never happened in my 35 years of living and I see no indication it ever well, believing it's possible just leads to misery and disappointment, but I still hope I can plant the seeds of change that maybe someday, this could be a thing women could experience. That you don't just meet someone who expects you to either put out or give them a rejection notice within a few dates. (Or one.) I have for the most part stopped dating and I haven't had to deal with pushy unwanted advances, nor coercion, nor assault, nor rape since deciding to never EVER be alone with a guy. But I had really wanted to fall in love so it's sad that it feels like it really might not ever happen for me. I mean sure it might but in the past few years I've really been facing that unless I intentionally date, I really choose not to hang out with men casually and there is really not much way it would happen.

I still hope that I will figure out a way to date and not deal with this, but I guess the reality is I will just have to prepare myself to deal with all the gross uncomfortable groping way before I'm ready for it. Dating literally makes me feel terrified. Why would I consciously choose to subject myself to a man? Do I have to be alone with him within three dates? Do we have to fuck or stop seeing each other? Like ugh. I'm not even sure if I can be attracted to men anymore because at this point I am so pissed off the accepted behavior that I can't respect guys who act like this and it's too many to count. Guys who don't do this, thank you for existing, no you won't always get props or cookies or whatever but keep it up. Maybe we can turn this tide?

It's really funny though because people have blamed me for all the pushy gross and abusive things men have done to me "like why are you hanging out with them?".. "if it happens to you a lot maybe you're projecting something that makes them do that, like you need to get therapy because it's your fault"... "Why would be alone with them if you don't want to be pushed into sex?".. "Why would you be their friend and lead them on and smile if you weren't going to put out?" It goes on and on. And it seems like the SAME people shame me for thus deciding not to hang out with men at all ever. "Maybe you should get some therapy" "Its not that hard to just project a state of being that makes men stop being abusive to you"

Like what the fuck ever. People who say this stuff can shove off. Maybe they should get some therapy to understand why they say such horrible things to people.
posted by xarnop at 12:23 PM on January 16, 2018 [94 favorites]

If you keep pushing on her head or her hand and she keeps pulling it back to somewhere else, that's a flashing red neon sign that she doesn't want to give you a blow job dude. Just fucking stop it.
posted by Sophie1 at 12:25 PM on January 16, 2018 [46 favorites]

if this is entirely the responsibility of the man every time, how is this not infantilizing women?

This is not the responsibility of the man every time. As a woman who likes sex, a lot, I have had to back off from men who made it clear they weren't interested. And by "made it clear," I mean, didn't react to initial advances by getting closer, by responding enthusiastically, not "they shoved me away and got loud at me."

Men are just much, much more likely to believe sex is "owed" to them, and that there is some magic trick that will turn reluctance into consent.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:25 PM on January 16, 2018 [88 favorites]

I guess my main question is, if this is entirely the responsibility of the man every time, how is this not infantilizing women? At what point is this downplaying the agency and power of women to stand up and say no?

"why aren't the women saying no saying no in the way that I want them to say it"
posted by poffin boffin at 12:25 PM on January 16, 2018 [119 favorites]

coercive sex (in the form of pressing the night forward until the other person gives in) is manipulative and gross and rapey and leaves women feeling like fucking worthless crap afterwards. What happened here was coercive sex and it is fucking wrong and it happens all the goddamn time and is not unique at all. It's common. It's normal. It sucks.
posted by Annika Cicada at 12:25 PM on January 16, 2018 [68 favorites]

Is it unreasonable to ask that people be direct when they sense they want an encounter to stop?

The problem is when women are direct and tell people "No" best case scenario they are now the "frigid bitch" and worse case scenario they are fucking murdered. How many stories are their of women turning men down at bars who then get knifed by said men? So yeah, it is unreasonable.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:25 PM on January 16, 2018 [77 favorites]

If you read this story and think, "Wow a bad date, big deal" or "Where's the assault?" then you need to reevaluate yourself.

I personally went through a entitled asshole dating phase where I pushed harder than I should have and gave too many women a bad evening. Thankfully looking back I don't think any of the situations were as bad as what was described above, but how can I really know? I haven't talked to any of these people since, so for all I know they found it traumatic. Either way, I'm sorry and I look back on that time shamefully. I felt I deserved something from those women, and like a lot of other entitled asshole men I thought there was some secret method to getting it other than "Be a person, treat them like a person, see what happens."

In a world where people are more open with their desires and enthusiastic consent is the norm, their experience would have undoubtedly been better and likely my experience better as well. I was sex stupid living in a world where men are supposed to push and women are supposed to resist. I never got any "What you did yesterday was unacceptable" texts, but judging by the general lack of second dates I was still being a gross asshole. If any of this sounds familiar to you then maybe do what I did and think more critically about your choices and how they may have hurt others without you even knowing it.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:26 PM on January 16, 2018 [23 favorites]

I am so goddamned happy that this conversation is finally happening.
posted by Sophie1 at 12:26 PM on January 16, 2018 [59 favorites]

Like, even if you don't think it's appropriate to use the words sexual assault, it still was a shitty sexual encounter. And if you take Aziz Ansari's words at face value, he doesn't want that either, so... "How do we make this not happen?" should be the question regardless.

I mean, sex where not everyone is enjoying it, even if they're consenting to it, is kinda awkward and awful anyway. Why the heck would anyone want to settle for that? It's not only awful behavior, it's stupid behavior. It only even makes any sense if you view sex as a game you win by sticking it in someone, which you know...

Sex is a lot more fun when you ditch that particular bullshit.

Also less rapey. Which should be kind of important.
posted by Zalzidrax at 12:28 PM on January 16, 2018 [20 favorites]

I guess my main question is, if this is entirely the responsibility of the man every time, how is this not infantilizing women?

She said she didn't want to have sex on a first date, how much clearer can you get? This isn't mind reading or being excessively careful.
posted by smoke at 12:29 PM on January 16, 2018 [42 favorites]

Sexual coercion describes nearly every sexual experience I’ve had with a man.

I literally do not know a woman who hasn’t experienced this.

I am so fucking tired. And there aren’t enough favorites in the world for this:

All men benefit from women’s fear of saying no.

We know why you laugh at “because of the implication.” It’s because it’s fucking true.
posted by schadenfrau at 12:29 PM on January 16, 2018 [80 favorites]

I am so goddamned happy that this conversation is finally happening.
posted by Sophie1 at 3:26 PM on January 16 [2 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]

Same. It's the first time on metafilter i've told my history about being coercively raped. And, obviously, it's hurtful and frustrating beyond belief at the people in this very thread that just aren't. listening. to the women involved. But having this conversation is too fucking important for me to sit and watch it happen without me.
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:29 PM on January 16, 2018 [36 favorites]

Several comments deleted. Hello greetings it would be awesome if people would refrain from trolling or bullshit or "just asking questions" or other weird contrarianism in here. Consider this a warning.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:32 PM on January 16, 2018 [44 favorites]

One of the hardest elements for me with this revelation and many others in the #metoo camp is that very uncomfortable realization that if this thing that this celebrity did was sexual assault, then the thing that random dude in college did to me was also assault. And it's not in my brain that I'm a victim of sexual assault. That's not who I am; I am not that girl.

But I am. Most of us are. Because we are taught to be polite and to not assert and all the other bits in between. It's rarely spelled out that you can change your mind and that people should respect that. Just because you shaved your legs and put on the cute undies before the date doesn't mean you can't say three kisses deep, "Uhm. Not feeling it. Want to go home." And have the person you're with respect that and not pull a whiny brat manuever.

But it's hard because we're very tied up in how we are perceived sexually. Saying to someone, "not feeling it and I want to go home," no matter how kindly intended is going to hurt their feelings. And some people really don't deal well with hurt feelings. An equal number of people really will go out of their way to avoid hurting someone's feelings.

There's a lot to unpack here and most of it isn't just about Aziz. It's about how our whole culture functions, or rather, doesn't function when it comes to sex.
posted by teleri025 at 12:32 PM on January 16, 2018 [72 favorites]

I guess my main question is, if this is entirely the responsibility of the man every time, how is this not infantilizing women?

She did her part. She said no. She said she was uncomfortable, she physically changed her behavior. What you're doing is not asking women to take part in the responsibility, you're asking women to take on more responsibility so that men can keep on - being creeps and coercing women, without having to be adults and look at the consequences of their actions. Women are always are expected to cater to men's behavior and pick up the slack, instead of men admitting they have faults.
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:33 PM on January 16, 2018 [127 favorites]

And I have this queasy feeling in my stomach, not just for all the usual reasons (though: yeah, those too), but because it is the culture, and it’s omnipresent. I remember it even among young queer women, especially those who were newly masculine of center, who thought there was some sort of role they were supposed to perform. Persistence as a sexual value is fucking gross, and it is everywhere, and it is romanticized. And it makes it so hard to talk about, because I doubt there are many people who can look back on their own sexual history and not find examples of this, and no one wants to do that.

Masculinity, as a construct, wherever it shows up, is a fucking poison.
posted by schadenfrau at 12:33 PM on January 16, 2018 [36 favorites]

As others have noted, his behavior wasn't particularly unusual. So, if the lose-your-career-over-it line moves somewhere near this Ansari thing, how many men need to lose their careers? And, if the answer is "a significant percentage", what does that look like, practically and culturally?
posted by gurple at 12:33 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

and that there is some magic trick that will turn reluctance into consent.

that trick is called wearing you down, it's the whining and complaining and sulking and pretending they didn't hear you say no, pretending they thought you were joking when you said no, bargaining (the tired gross old "just the tip" thing that people inexplicably find hilarious to joke about), nonviolent threatening ("everyone will think you did anyway" or "i'll tell everyone i dumped you for [fake embarrassing reason]" etc), saying shit like "if you REALLY loved me" or "wow i thought you were COOL", the list LITERALLY NEVER FUCKING ENDS. never.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:34 PM on January 16, 2018 [79 favorites]

Is it unreasonable to ask that people be direct when they sense they want an encounter to stop?

This or this or this should show you that we are that far gone.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:34 PM on January 16, 2018 [32 favorites]

If that's what you think your alternatives are - asshole or murderer - why would you ever go on a date? Are we really that far gone?

Welcome to being a woman! The possibility of being straight up murdered by a man is, indeed, a thing we think about distressingly often! The bar is just that low! He didn't murder me, so that sexual coercion wasn't that bad. He didn't murder me, so I can deal with the assault. He didn't murder me, I was lucky to only be raped.
posted by yasaman at 12:35 PM on January 16, 2018 [131 favorites]

Are we really that far gone?

Considering women do get murdered for saying no to men, obviously the answer is yes, but I am not sure what you mean by 'far gone' because it's always been this way.

I am really sad that this event happened but I am glad that people are reading and thinking about it. I think every man should read this, and think about it, as in, let it get past your ego. Let it make you uncomfortable when relating it to your own past experiences.
posted by destructive cactus at 12:35 PM on January 16, 2018 [34 favorites]

Are we really that far gone?

Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: We do not know who you are going to be when we go on a date. Are you going to be an ok guy or an asshole. Are you going to be potentially a person we can have fun with or a rapist? Are you going to share some of our values or are you going to want more than we are willing to give at the time? We have no fucking idea (see Schroedinger's Rapist). So essentially, if our experience tells us anything, you might be.
posted by Sophie1 at 12:35 PM on January 16, 2018 [34 favorites]

Honestly, that sounds like entirely the wrong thing to be focusing on right now, gurple. At least in this conversation.
posted by ODiV at 12:36 PM on January 16, 2018 [6 favorites]

And, if the answer is "a significant percentage", what does that look like, practically and culturally?

I think there are enough non-icky people in the U.S. to fill any associated job vacancies.
posted by Jacqueline at 12:36 PM on January 16, 2018 [20 favorites]

Ansari should be ashamed of himself. That's no way for a grown ass man to behave. He should've known better, and I think it's a good thing that this encounter is being aired in public becuase it in the best case it should be educational for many men, it should act as a moment that teaches them that what they think is just the normal cat and mouse game of getting a yes out of a no, is actually abusive behavior, somewhere on the spectrum of sexual violence. I think you can see it that way without calling it assault. I think it's on the spectrum there, and I think recognizing the ways it fell short of assault is actually important, because I suspect that many men play this game where they "understand the importance of consent" but also think that just means the real dance is in wearing a girl down until she gives consent. They think of themselves as playing it on the right side of things becuase what they're doing is *not* assault. But it's still bad and hurtful behavior, and men should learn that it's bad and hurtful and that if they do it they'll be shamed for it. That just because it's not rape doesn't mean it's not on the road to rape, as it were.
posted by dis_integration at 12:36 PM on January 16, 2018 [16 favorites]

OH hey. We’re having the Cat Person conversation again. This was a short story thatggot some press and a conversation on the blue fairly recently. Except now it’s about a real person with more coercion and her interpretation of the events is still treated as though a woman can’t possibly be a reliable narrator.

I wonder why women aren’t considered reliable narrators of their own lived experiences. I wonder who benefits from insisting that women’s interpretations of events can’t be trusted....
posted by bilabial at 12:36 PM on January 16, 2018 [89 favorites]

women get murdered for speaking up in public when other women have said no to men, complete random stranger women who were like "dude give it a rest she said no"

for fuck's sake
posted by poffin boffin at 12:37 PM on January 16, 2018 [46 favorites]

There was an fpp some years ago (which I can't find at the moment) about men and consent and sex, and a pullquote from the link was something about how it's not women's inability to say no, it's men's inability - refusal - to hear it.
posted by rtha at 12:38 PM on January 16, 2018 [28 favorites]

All the men who are like "Why didn't she just say No, Get Lost Pal, I'm outta here!" I don't know why Grace didn't but I know why I didn't when I was that age -- because even while a guy was treating me like an object, ignoring my feelings, bulldozing over my boundaries, acting like how I felt didn't matter... I was still telling myself He doesn't mean to make you feel bad, He's not really like that, He's still a good guy, He's just doing what guys do, and I still liked him. I still wanted him to like me. And women aren't morons, we know that whatever guys say, shutting down a date with a "No, really, we're done, get your hands off me," means there won't be another date, because that makes men feel bad and men don't like to feel bad. We say "No" as nicely and politely as we can because even when you're hurting us, we still want you to like us.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 12:38 PM on January 16, 2018 [140 favorites]

Also, I thought it was ironic that this story hit so soon before the season two premier of Crashing. In it (spoiler alert), the main character has a drunken hookup with a woman he met at a bar, and just as they're about to get down to it he pauses and asks her in an excited, slightly scared way, if she's really, actually into doing it because he really is. She is, and they proceed to do it. I know it's a show and an idealized version of reality, but it was a good depiction of how this might actually work if we (men) try.
posted by schoolgirl report at 12:38 PM on January 16, 2018 [10 favorites]

The number of men I've had sex with so that they would shut up and go away is nonzero. It's embarrassingly nonzero. I should have been better at saying no, better at navigating the pushy jerk who just kept asking and asking like a toddler who wants ice cream. I mean, I'm better now as a grownup (I'm 47) but my twenties and more than I really like of my thirties? Sometimes having sex with them to get them to leave *was* the easy way to get through the evening. I should have done better.
posted by which_chick at 12:38 PM on January 16, 2018 [27 favorites]

And, if the answer is "a significant percentage", what does that look like, practically and culturally?

other, non-gross people step in and do $entertainment_industry_thing?
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:39 PM on January 16, 2018 [16 favorites]

Like, seriously, if your main concern in the midst of all of this is "but how will our NetFlixes get made?", I don't even know what to tell you.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:40 PM on January 16, 2018 [64 favorites]

For everyone digging into aches and wounds to speak in this thread that we may have a better future for our self and/or people in the future, may you have comfort in your heart and strength in your spirit and may healing pour over you like waters. Like waters that are bursting forth to restore a dry aching land because the dam is burst and we are not stopping it back again.
posted by xarnop at 12:41 PM on January 16, 2018 [72 favorites]

The poorly reported Aziz Ansari exposé was a missed opportunity, by Jill Filipovic in the Guardian. (h/t Mina Kimes on twitter)
posted by msalt at 12:41 PM on January 16, 2018 [10 favorites]

One of the articles links this 2015 piece by Rebecca Traister "Why sex that’s consensual can still be bad. And why we’re not talking about it." It's worth revisiting in light of all that has happened since, in the way that the past informs the future.

"After all, sex is also, still, political. Contemporary feminism asks us to acknowledge that women “can have as many partners as men, initiate sex as freely as men, without being brutalized and stigmatized, and that’s great,” says Salamishah Tillet, a professor of English and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania and a co-founder of A Long Walk Home, an organization that works to end violence against women. The problem arises, she continues, with the feeling that “that alone will mean we’re equal. That alone is not an answer to a system of persistent sexual domination or exploitation. These women are still having these encounters within that larger structure, and men are not being asked to think of the women having sex as their equal partners.”"
posted by Rumple at 12:42 PM on January 16, 2018 [9 favorites]

Men are just much, much more likely to believe sex is "owed" to them, and that there is some magic trick that will turn reluctance into consent.

But being a boundary pushing jerkwad is a fantastic magic trick to turn enthusiastic consent into reluctance.
posted by Zalzidrax at 12:42 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

I feel like a lot of the pushback against the reality here is coming from people - men and women - who don't really believe in the idea of a patriarchy, ie a society geared towards telling women they have no value outside of what pleasure they can give men, that a women's role is essentially to make men happy and that doing so is a great self expression of worth.

If you're aware of and accept that we live in a fundamentally sexist society that isunceasingly exerting pressure on women to do what men want them to do, especially sexually, this behaviour starts looking a lot less okay and asking men to do better than ansari not so demanding.
posted by smoke at 12:43 PM on January 16, 2018 [21 favorites]

And, if the answer is "a significant percentage", what does that look like, practically and culturally?

I think there are enough non-icky people in the U.S. to fill any associated job vacancies.

other, non-gross people step in and do $entertainment_industry_thing?

I wasn't being glib, and I'm not sure why you are. Seriously, let's say 25% of men in entertainment have done something at least as assault-y as what Ansari did. Maybe it's a lot more, maybe it's a little less, I don't know.

So, OK, let's say all those people should lose their careers. How does that actually happen? babe got one article out like this. Maybe there's appetite for 4-5 more. Then what?

I can't imagine that the lose-your-career line actually settles out here, even if maybe it should.
posted by gurple at 12:44 PM on January 16, 2018

She was on a date with a noted and celebrated "male feminist" who made his entire career on being a good guy. Then she learned - as so many of us have - that the man in private is very different than the man in public. So she says no. Multiple times. Directly and indirectly*. Once you've had your limits and nos crossed so many times it becomes...like you go into another mode, you start just trying to get through it, you start figuring out just how different he is in private and hope you can get out of the night with as little damage as possible. You keep trying to convince yourself that it's not what it is (which is why the staying over, etc happens - you want to be able to lie to yourself too when this is all over).

I don't care what you call it or how you define it, but if anyone reading this doesn't understand what the big deal is and engages in sex like this (that includes whining yourself into the marital bed btw) then fucking stop it.

*"Drawing on the conversation analytic literature, and on our own data, we claim that both men and women have a sophisticated ability to convey and to comprehend refusals, including refusals which do not include the word ‘no’, and we suggest that male claims not to have ‘understood’ refusals which conform to culturally normative patterns can only be heard as self-interested justifications for coercive behaviour." Mythcommunication: It’s Not That They Don’t Understand, They Just Don’t Like The Answer
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 12:45 PM on January 16, 2018 [67 favorites]

Being a woman who dated in a major city without a car and not great public transit has led me to not having been able to escape when a date wanted to have sex and I didn’t want to. Or a “friend” who woke me up on his couch one night by trying to take my underwear off. All of these were so called nice guys who assumed that because I was there, I obviously wanted it.

Like a lot of women, I have too many horror stories. Aziz Ansari used his nice guy persona on purpose. And it will probably continue to work.
posted by Kitteh at 12:46 PM on January 16, 2018 [21 favorites]

what does that look like, practically and culturally?

I think it's a valid question to ask...and the answer IMO is that the entire world from the ground up will have many, many, many fewer (most likely cis) men in positions of power and never being able to find meaningful employment or public/civic/elected/creative positions ever again.
posted by Annika Cicada at 12:47 PM on January 16, 2018 [15 favorites]

I might worry about The Future Of Society if I thought for a single moment that "all the men who are guilty of sexual assault" or even "all the men who are guilty of rape" would be fired, lose their career status, and we'd have a huge power vacuum in politics, entertainment, and corporate industry. I could enjoy playing with what-if scenarios for that, pondering which women or what types of women would be swept into those spots, and how that would change the world.

But it's not going to happen. We're not even going to call out 5% of the men who've done these creepy, rapey things - not even 5% of the ones who've actually committed rape, of the "I knew she didn't want it, but..." variety.

If this is the beginning of a cascade, it's a pay-it-forward thing where we tell today's teenage and pre-teen boys, "you see that guy? Don't be like him."
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:48 PM on January 16, 2018 [56 favorites]

what does that look like, practically and culturally?

first we form a committee of public safety; later, the guillotine
posted by poffin boffin at 12:56 PM on January 16, 2018 [66 favorites]

I can't imagine that the lose-your-career line actually settles out here, even if maybe it should.

Perhaps you could work on your ability to imagine a better world somewhere that isn’t a thread where women are sharing their own experiences of rape, sexual assault, and sexual violence.
posted by schadenfrau at 12:57 PM on January 16, 2018 [40 favorites]

What happens next, practically and culturally, is that our Woke TV shows aren't made by men who have coerced women into sex. Our possible presidential candidates aren't interviewed by men who have coerced women into sex. Our president isn't a man who has coerced women into sex. Our music isn't made by men who have coerced women into sex. We are not entertained by men who have coerced women into sex but who are also very good at sports or making movies. Our clothes are not photographed by men who have coerced men into sex. When these men stop being our tastemakers, there will be space for diverse voices to create and tell and explain, and the vulnerable voices being violated out of these spaces will be the ones who make things work.

You can already see the change in some spaces. Priorities will shift. Values will shift. Things will shift and we'll be OK.
posted by ChuraChura at 12:58 PM on January 16, 2018 [119 favorites]

and then we take Berlin.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:58 PM on January 16, 2018 [19 favorites]

I'm worried that, because I am extremely pessimistic about the lose-your-career line actually settling out this far into the bell curve, an attempt to make that happen will attenuate all the force and fury that we've currently got going. I worry about the great being the enemy of the good.
posted by gurple at 1:02 PM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Why do the people who feel compelled to point out that Ansari did nothing illegal technically (ie, it wasn’t assault) have a problem with the publishing of the story? Also not illegal. If your standard for sexual behaviour that is permissible to complain about is legality, why do you have a different standard for the social act of telling one’s story of a sexual encounter?

I don’t accept “you didn’t explicitly tell me no to XYZ specifically” as an excuse from my five-year-old as an excuse for behaviour that results in consequences, why are women expected to accept it from adult men?
posted by lastobelus at 1:02 PM on January 16, 2018 [66 favorites]

Many women don't want to believe that an honestly normal part of dating is such a violation because then they'd have to wrestle with what they went through. I've had many friends who were raped by boyfriends, friends, exes, and within 48 hours after being clear about what it was they were calling it "bad sex" or "mixed communication" or "it's complicated." We're encouraged to not see our own traumas clearly. It's one of the reasons there's so much rules lawyering about what really "counts" as a sexual violation.

The other night I couldn't sleep because I had read too many shit opinions about this. As I laid there I tried to remember the first time that pushpushpush past multiple clear nos happened to me. I was like 15? 16? then I remembered. 13. my boyfriend tore my labia clumsily fingering me in the cafeteria, a thing I protested before the moment and in the moment, but just had to sit through and then faked an orgasm to make him stop. For the rest of our relationship he'd bring it up as one of the hottest things we did and I'd play act that I felt the same but try to avoid it whenever possible. It wasn't always possible. I thought I was being a prude. Otherwise I really liked him, he was a sweet nerdy guy who played MTG. But this is just what horny teen boys do, I thought, they keep pestering until the girl gives in and I kept giving in, so it's my fault I felt so shitty.

I don't even count it on my list of assaults. Just a blip. The guy driving me into the woods when I thought we were going to get dinner & massaging me to "relax me" before "coaxing" me to blow him when I was 15 stands out more ("The Implication" indeed), but the 13yr old one was formative, harder to name when someone who supposedly cares about you tells you how good it was.

This isn't to say it's not complicated. It is complicated. Women don't agree how we should see "bad dates" - who is "responsible" - how to not get into that "situation." Is it assault? Is it mixed signals? Is it crappy communication? Do guys lose their minds when they're horny? Did i lead him on? So many questions. Very few people ask why men generally aren't concerned at all about the complications us women weave ourselves through.

Why are (not all) men so ok with having sex on someone who all they can say clearly is that it's not technically illegal? By and large the only chorus of concerns I've ever heard from men on this topic is centered around "false accusations" and "morning after regrets." Rape prevention for het men is almost 100% how to not be accused of it, not how to avoid getting anywhere close to it. Why is that ok?? Why are men fine with holding other men to this standard??

To finish up, my husband is the only man in my vast sexual history who I have/had a continued sexual relationships with where this type of complicated thing never happens. Every other male partner I've screwed more than say, 5ish times?, have done it at least once (and of course LOTS of one night stands). So, what, do I say this is the first het relationship I've ever had without sexual assault? Even from guys I still feel super kindly towards? Guys I would even say I love?

Complicated means it's too hard to think about.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 1:03 PM on January 16, 2018 [122 favorites]

I am EXTREMELY unhappy with the idea that we can't protest against coercive sex because it might mean that real sexual assaulters get to go free.
posted by ChuraChura at 1:05 PM on January 16, 2018 [68 favorites]

I worry about the great being the enemy of the good.

I worry that you don't see how absurd a slippery slope argument this is.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:06 PM on January 16, 2018 [41 favorites]

Worry less and listen more, gurple. Concern trolling about society when there are actual people in the thread is pretty shitty.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:07 PM on January 16, 2018 [38 favorites]

Relevant: A man who wants to hear a Yes will find a way to drag it out of you.

One of the dangers, I think, of depending on passive consent — the idea that all conditions are Go unless you are met with a swift, stern “NO MEANS NO” or a slap to the face — is that it conditions sexual aggressors (particularly men) to ignore or deflect or attempt to wear down perfectly clear rejections. As long as a No is plausibly deniable, it isn’t really a No; and if she didn’t really say No then you can’t possibly have done anything wrong.

It will never stop making my blood run cold to realize that women exist in a perpetual, default state of yes, and are routinely expected to put up an actual physical fight in an attempt to make someone hear our no.
posted by obstinate harpy at 1:08 PM on January 16, 2018 [69 favorites]

Straight, cis men, it's so easy! Just imagine yourself in the same position with someone with authority or power or strength over you! You're not "the woman" in this scenario, you are YOU!

YOU are the one who walks into a restaurant and the host, a burly man, pats you on the butt as you walk by. When you give him a look, he winks at you and then pointedly turns away. You note how he could kick your ass and what a fuss it would make in the restaurant and just head to your dinner to ponder this, disconcertingly, the rest of the night...or the rest of your life.

YOU are the one who is asked out to the sports bar for dinner with your professional mentor - a great guy! A family man! He has the ability to make. your. career. He follows you into the bathroom and gets very aggressive. You tell your friends about it the next day, they roll their eyes at you. I mean, everyone knows what that mentor guy is all about, right? Why would you meet with him like that?

YOU are the one whose opinions aren't trusted. YOU are the one who is doubted. YOU are the one who seems to experience so much of these come-ons but YOU are the one who must navigate them without getting raped, fired, embarrassed, hurt, pregnant, diseased, or losing your sense of self and emotional center. Try to look good while you do it, please.
posted by amanda at 1:09 PM on January 16, 2018 [115 favorites]

Oh come on, it has yet to be proven that violent serial rapists are actually losing their careers over this. Noted antisemite, woman beater, and sexual assaulter Mel Gibson is back on the payroll after a few years away. Maybe Weinstein is actually out? But for all the rest, give it a decade and see just how many are back to what they were doing professionally 6 months ago. Aziz won't be cancelled because Woody Allen still works. Because Casey Affleck won an Oscar. Because fucking James Goddamned Franco is talking about the importance of TimesUp. The only people who will be ruined are the people who are always ruined - the victims.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 1:09 PM on January 16, 2018 [57 favorites]

I caught the Babe story not long after it was published and have read probably 5 or 6 op eds written in reaction to it since. It's baffling how blind to the fucked-uppedness of the situation some people seem to be (one op-ed, I think maybe the Guardian (?), was almost squarely blaming Grace for not leaving, as if Ansari being fucking gross was just men being men, nothing to be done about that!). On the other hand, that's the insidious thing about how society and patriarchy handle this whole ball of wax. You've got (some) men over here saying "where's the rape?" because unless he violated the law it's all A-OK. No! This reminds me of the rhetoric surrounding Roy Moore in AL, with some people quibbling about the age of consent, as if a 32 year old dating a 17 year old high school student was perfectly normal while the prospect of that same 32 year old dating a 16 year old was reprehensible. All these things exist on a spectrum, it isn't night and day. No, Aziz Ansari's behavior was not the same thing as Weinstein's, and probably isn't a crime, but it's still fucking bad behavior that we should all agree is unacceptable.

BUT that's not how our society actually works. There's some weird thought process that goes "nope not a crime" therefore "perfectly A-OK" and skips straight ahead to "poor guy's gonna lose his career" or "I can't believe someone decided to publish their account of this private encounter!" I see how we're all taught to conform to certain etiquette that's real real messed up but if you don't see that line (because your whole life, you've been conditioned not to) then it doesn't even seem weird at all. Once you decide that Ansari isn't a criminal everything after becomes assigning blame unduly to Grace. What the fuck?
posted by axiom at 1:09 PM on January 16, 2018 [22 favorites]

There was this guy I really admired in the 80s. He was a member of the ANC. He was an activist and taking a break for things to cool down in South Africa. I was 18. I really was attracted to him, but he wanted to go places I wasn't ready for, especially since I had been raped just 18 months prior. After moving him back into a place I was more comfortable, he kept moving back to where he wanted to be. I finally outright told him I didn't want him to perform oral sex on me. Thankfully, he didn't rape me, he put on his pants, called me a baby and stormed out.

I took a chance that he actually liked me and wanted to get to know me. I'm glad he didn't rape me. I'm glad he didn't hit me. I already knew those things were possibilities when I told him "no."
posted by Sophie1 at 1:09 PM on January 16, 2018 [36 favorites]

Exactly. Apparently our no must be defined by a yell/scream/physical reaction.
posted by Kitteh at 1:10 PM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

considering that Jez finally wrote a piece on this and it was largely blaming the Babe for running the story at all

jezebel is Very Bad and i hate them
posted by poffin boffin at 1:15 PM on January 16, 2018 [19 favorites]

Not to be to sarcastic, but I guess I just don't see anything coming of this. I wish I did, but considering that Jez finally wrote a piece on this and it was largely blaming the Babe for running the story at all, I think a lot of "feminist" places seem to consider Ansari as one of their own and are circling the wagons.

The Jez piece was kinda muddled and unhelpful itself, in my opinion, but I don't think the argument that Babe's stylistic choices with the piece did few favours for Grace and for the broader conversation is a wrong argument. Saying it actively did a disservice to Grace and to the conversation is perhaps too strong, but I wish it had been handled a little differently. Apparently their staffers are all quite young (and perhaps therefore more likely to lack experience, though they argue it actually helps). I felt myself anticipating the backlash even as I read the piece, though, and that's just never a good sign. Backlash of some sort is inevitable, but a little more skill (and a little less XO Jane It-Happened-To-Me-style editorialising in the writing) could have helped.

Still, there is conversation happening, so that's something, I suppose.
posted by halation at 1:16 PM on January 16, 2018 [6 favorites]

I'm not the best when it comes to being not-sexist, when it comes down to brass tacks, it seems that many men constantly frame the issue in "what can I get away with" rather than "what can myself and my partner enjoy together".

If you're thinking about it in terms of what you can get away with YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

Am I incorrect?
posted by Talez at 1:17 PM on January 16, 2018 [18 favorites]

"Grace" claims that AA (allegedly) stuck his fingers down her throat. On what fucking planet is this not assault?
posted by brujita at 1:18 PM on January 16, 2018 [9 favorites]

What has always blown my mind about this, every time it’s happened, is: how is this fun for you? You have to view women as objects, and sexual conquest as a commodity, to enjoy yourself when your partner clearly is not enjoying herself. You have to be completely unable to connect to and empathize with a woman in the moment for this to happen. Because otherwise the second you see it’s happening, you are fucking horrified and you stop. If you care about them as human beings at all, if you care about what they feel and experience, if they are not just props in your own story of accomplishment or whatever the fuck, you stop.

I say this thinking about an experience of my own that still fucking haunts me: a woman asked me to do something, I did it, and it triggered her back to her rape. There was so much wrong with this — neither of us was emotionally literate or, maybe more appropriately, healed enough from our own traumas to have a goddamn conversation about this before it happened, or to actually deal with it like adults after it happened. But even while drunk and young and stupid, you see someone freaking out, AND YOU FUCKING REACT LIKE A HUMAN. You fucking stop and you ask what’s wrong and what’s happening (which is how I knew the thing she asked me to do had triggered her). You care about the fact that another human being is experiencing something bad, with you.

It is truly frightening to think how absent that has to be for these things to happen. For these things to happen, the people who do them have to just...not fucking care. And they happen all the time.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:18 PM on January 16, 2018 [78 favorites]

Boomers, Xers, and Millennials were mostly socialized to believe that sex before marriage was shameful and taboo. Practically speaking, what this means is their first sexual experiences revolved around breaking of boundaries set in place not just by themselves, but by friends, family and society at large. People with healthy living processes tend to work through that, and the best of them avoid setting those expectations in the future. One way to help with that is to undermine the patriarchy so future young people don't have to go through as much psychic trauma just to see what sex is like.

Breaking personal boundaries can be exhilarating. Convincing others to see events from your point of view can be satisfying. First times can be fun, best times are of course the best, and all of us want our next sex to be as good as our best sex. For whatever reason, a large fraction of men have internalized that "breaking boundaries" = "sexy." They see a boundary as something to be overcome for funsies and not something to be respected. Their potential partners are outside of their Dunbar sphere, and so they see them as something less than human to begin with. They also don't care to reflect and work on themselves so they can purge that invasive and toxic heuristic completely. They're like those beetles that copulate fruitlessly with glass bottles, except with free will. It's sick, and part of the sickness is that the patients are insisting that they're fine, that they're better than fine, that everyone else is sick.

I don't know of a way to re-educate people who have already internalized that heuristic other than to give them a list of dos and don'ts, like they were toddlers or prisoners. It's not sexy to whip out primary or secondary sexual organs without affirmative consent. It's not sexy to ply someone with intoxicants until they trip over their sober boundaries or lose consciousness. It's not sexy to selfishly batter someone else's boundaries or body to facilitate one's own orgasm. It's not sexy for all consenting partners to have to do a "I really shouldn't" dance to avoid public shame through private OCD-like rituals. None of us should have to live in a guess-culture "Baby, It's Cold Outside" world.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:20 PM on January 16, 2018 [34 favorites]

I wish I didn't know this but AA didn't invent the claw and it is move some guys use when having consensual sex.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 1:21 PM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

None of us should have to live in a guess-culture "Baby, It's Cold Outside" world.

EW i knew this convo felt familiar in a bad mefi way

dislike
posted by poffin boffin at 1:24 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

I am... regretting this already, but I really don't want to google that... What is the claw? *preemptively cringing*
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 1:26 PM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

Usually I don't want to bring men's experiences into this, because it can be a distraction. But men, in general, are the creators of this problem, and men, in general, should be the ones to fix it.

And I think a lot of the pushback comes from the fact that men want rape to be something tangible and specific, and not a spectrum of behavior that violates consent. It's the same way white people want racism to be the guy in the hood, which is easy to identify and point out and declare you would never be that, and you can wash your hands of it and say, thank God, I am not a racist.

And so when people point out there is a whole range of racist things, and well-meaning people can support racist systems, and engage in microagressions or cultural appropriation or the like, they get pushback.

This article was important because it pushes discussions of consent away from the unambiguous rapist, and makes lack of consent something that happens in a wider variety of circumstances. One that is likely to, and should, cause an awful lot of men to reflect backward, with nausea and horror, to circumstances when they were pushy, when they took a lack of no as a yes, to when they ignored small but real expressions of discomfort and unwillingness.

Not just men, I guess. I've been on the other side of this, too. But I expect it is a million times more common for women to experience it from men, because, in part, we're literally socialized to treat sex as a weird sort of sales opportunity where if we are pushy enough we can turn a no into a yes.

And men don't want to think that that's a violation. That this also is an example of lack of consent.

This should be a come to Jesus moment. This should be an opportunity for men to do better. But I have seen both men and women responding to this in incredibly condescending, victim-blamy, shitty ways, because, I suspect, they don't want this to be a thing. They don't want to have to think about the possibility that what seemed like clumsy, pushy, unsatisfying sex is also a violation, even if it doesn't fit the letter of the law regarding rape.

I hope we're at the start of this discussion, as legitimately nauseating as it is to revisit our sexual histories in this context. I really think it needs to be done. And we should want it to be done. If we're not rapists, we should want the people we have sex with to want to have sex with us. It seems obvious, but, holy shit, there really does not seem to be a consensus about this.
posted by maxsparber at 1:28 PM on January 16, 2018 [74 favorites]

I wish I didn't know this but AA didn't invent the claw and it is move some guys use when having consensual sex.
I am... regretting this already, but I really don't want to google that... What is the claw? *preemptively cringing*

The claw is him sticking his fingers down her throat.

I've been *asked* to do "the claw" move before. Not by name, but as "stick your fingers down my throat!". Maybe Ansari had some kinky rough sex once with a woman who liked "the claw", he really enjoyed it, and so instead of paying attention to the mood and desires of new partners, he's chasing after that feeling again.
posted by dis_integration at 1:29 PM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Why are you wanting to "inform" the readers here that Aziz didn't invent this sexual move and people use it in a non rapey way? What the hell does that have to do with anything?
posted by agregoli at 1:29 PM on January 16, 2018 [9 favorites]

Sorry - "the claw" is what the sticking his fingers down her throat and then penetrating her with them move was referred to.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 1:29 PM on January 16, 2018

agregoli - I was responding to this "Grace" claims that AA (allegedly) stuck his fingers down her throat. On what fucking planet is this not assault? I was just mentioning the actual thing happening isn't what made it assault. If you read all my other comments in this thread you'll see clearly that I'm not giving AA a pass on a motherfucking thing.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 1:31 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

i have been asked by various friends to punch them in the stomach as hard as i can and yet somehow i do not believe that walking up to people, friends or not, and punching them in the stomach as hard as i can would ever be welcome or pleasant for the punchee, no matter how much i myself might have enjoyed it at the time.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:33 PM on January 16, 2018 [29 favorites]

It's not a matter of AA not paying attention, it's actively ignoring the lack of consent. Guys, especially 30+yr old experienced guys who made a living on "respecting women," don't accidentally sexually violate women. They understand our state of mind and just don't care.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 1:35 PM on January 16, 2018 [30 favorites]

I don't consider it assault. She gave some non-verbal messages that indicated willingness to have a sexual encounter. She gave some non-verbal messages that indicated unwillingness. Did she feel physically coerced or frightened? She sounds like she was reasonably sober. I'm female and I'm able to say No or Stop or I'm leaving now. And I have. And some men have been utter jackasses about it, socially, personally, professionally. Women have agency. If it had been a situation where he had power over her, like at work or school, that's classic harassment and possibly coercion. She gave him a blow job, then said No. He pressured her. Sounds like he was a dick-focused jerk.
posted by theora55 at 1:36 PM on January 16, 2018 [19 favorites]

extremely pessimistic about the lose-your-career line actually settling out this far into the bell curve, an attempt to make that happen will attenuate all the force and fury that we've currently got going

generally, as a rule, I think it's fucked up that pretty much all of the women that I've gone on dates with have had exit strategies - people who'd text to check in on them, someone who'd drop by the coffee shop and pretend to be there coincidentally, and so on. I think that they have had to adopt defensive strategies is fucked up - the people who forced them to do so support, invisibly, a culture of rape (which I attempted to allude to in my title)

we have an understanding in anti-racist circles that covert white supremacy bolsters overt white supremacy - Trump says he's not a racist but he enables them to hold rallies, to organize politically. similarly, stuff like this, which is not as serious as out-and-out physically forced sexual assault, still supports the rapists who feel emboldened to cross that line. it's not a hard line to walk right up to without anybody giving you a second look or telling you that it's not okay to go that far

because stuff like this, if you take it just a half-step too far, then that's actual physically forced sexual assault - and I'd rather live in a society where the normative line were drawn way further back away from actual physically forced assault, where walking up to the line was frowned on and real rape were prosecuted. this isn't about attenuating #MeToo - if that crowd loses steam over something like this then that means they aren't really engaging with the issue in whole. the issue is institutionalized and systemic and the only way to slay that powerful beast isn't running at it headlong - you have to find out where it feeds and starve it until it has no energy left to fight
posted by runt at 1:37 PM on January 16, 2018 [16 favorites]

Couple deleted; we're not going to launch into "but men pay for dates" or whatever, I can't imagine that leading to anything useful here.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:38 PM on January 16, 2018 [24 favorites]

I feel like I'm going to be thoroughly roasted for going against the grain here.
posted by theora55 at 1:38 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

I'm female and I'm able to say No or Stop or I'm leaving now.

good for you. Some women say this and get murdered for saying it
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 1:39 PM on January 16, 2018 [67 favorites]

Also, pro tip: if you are so unresponsive to how your partner feels that you could conceivably “accidentally” violate them, you are terrible at sex even when it’s wanted.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:39 PM on January 16, 2018 [45 favorites]

I think it's fucked up that pretty much all of the women that I've gone on dates with have had exit strategies

Hell, I have exit strategies when I meet new male coworkers in an unfamiliar office.

I've never been assaulted at work, but I'm always sharply aware of how small an office is and where I am in relation to the door when I'm alone in a room with a guy.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:40 PM on January 16, 2018 [19 favorites]

If there are messages of any kind that someone doesn't want to have sex, THEN DON'T HAVE SEX RIGHT THEN. Like, how are "mixed messages" a defense? "Well, she said she'd hate me if i robbed her right then, but then she sorta gave me this look that made me think she DID want to be robbed, so maybe she should be clearer." Mixed messages means one of the messages is some version of no/stop/slow down, that's the only message that matters. So what if guys have to walk away from sex sometimes that a woman actually wanted. Fuck only people who can clearly consent!
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 1:42 PM on January 16, 2018 [16 favorites]

I feel like I'm going to be thoroughly roasted for going against the grain here.

You are probably right. Did you read the woman's account of what happened? No charges have been filed; is it ok if instead of assault we just call it gross sexual coercion based on terrible power dynamics resulting in extreme discomfort?
posted by aspersioncast at 1:43 PM on January 16, 2018 [13 favorites]

If you're a man who has acted like Ansari and are now thinking about reaching out to the women involved, please read the answers to this question first. (tl;dr don't do it.)
posted by AFABulous at 1:44 PM on January 16, 2018 [22 favorites]

I did not view this as assault.

Ok, but do you consider Ansari's behavior wrong? 'Cause you don't get to be in position he's in without learning to read people. Hell, you don't get to be 34 without learning a bit on how to read people.

For whatever reason, he chose to ignore the various signals she was sending and now he's gotta deal with blowback. He has no one to blame for this but himself. Hopefully he'll reconsider his actions in the future.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:50 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

"Mixed messages" are bullshit. If you're climbing a ladder or backing a car out of a complicated spot and someone says, "okay you're cool, still cool, everything's fine, WAIT" you stop, you don't say "no you already told me it was okay!" and keep going. And even if they do then say "no, I was wrong, continue" most people are like "no hang on, what, are you sure?"

I'm female and I'm able to say No or Stop or I'm leaving now. And I have.

Congratulations. I wasn't always as great as you are.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:51 PM on January 16, 2018 [103 favorites]

No charges have been filed; is it ok if instead of assault we just call it gross sexual coercion based on terrible power dynamics resulting in extreme discomfort?

Personally, I would agree with that. The legal standard for assault (sex without consent) is stricter than the social standard for gross coercive behavior (sex without enthusiastic consent).

Just because someone didn't do something that meets the legal standard of assault doesn't mean there should be no consequences. It is perfectly reasonable to publicize gross-but-legal behavior and shun or boycott the perpetrator.
posted by Jacqueline at 1:51 PM on January 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

Found the fpp I referenced earlier : I said No. Sophia Katz said No. Saying No was easy, making the man who wanted to hear Yes listen to me when I said No was the challenge.
posted by rtha at 1:52 PM on January 16, 2018 [10 favorites]

"Mixed messages" are bullshit

I hate that framing. Once again, it shoves all the responsibility on the woman.

Ansari was sending mixed messages. He repeatedly seemed to understand that she wasn't interested, and then, when she would calm down, would start being sexually aggressive again. But I have yet to see his behavior described as sending mixed messages.

Or gaslighting, which it was.
posted by maxsparber at 1:53 PM on January 16, 2018 [110 favorites]

i think that rules lawyering about legal standards of assault is in the top 3 least important discussion topics in these situations
posted by poffin boffin at 1:54 PM on January 16, 2018 [45 favorites]

She was sending the "mixed messages" of "I don't despise you and want to kill you" and yet "I don't want to have sex with you." Apparently a lot of guys find those two concepts incompatible.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:54 PM on January 16, 2018 [30 favorites]

Women have agency.

I don't really think expecting people to be ubermensches in situations that provoke anxiety and often are triggers for trauma is a generous thing to do. she says she didn't want it, he grabbed her hand and placed it on his genitals repeatedly. she finally extricated herself for a few moments, told him he was uncomfortable, and then he presented his genitals again in spite of an obviously clear message

I'm on the side of not blaming Walter Scott for running away from the police because of his previous encounters with them or of Philando Castile's careful attempt to present his firearm permit because he had been pulled over 50+ times for minor violations (ie driving while black). I bring those examples up because they are also things that involve implied power dynamics and happen in a sociocultural context. it's not infantilizing to think 'I feel sorry for this person because the person with more power in this situation should've acted with much more diligence', especially not when that diligence has the possibility of averting trauma or death. and pushing people to act more diligently is, I believe, a crucial component to dismantling oppression, whatever it looks like, wherever it presents itself
posted by runt at 1:55 PM on January 16, 2018 [14 favorites]

having agency doesn't mean that I am responsible for everything that is done to me. There is a point at which I have clearly expressed my feelings [saying no, recoiling, pushing him away] and if someone keeps pushing beyond the boundaries that I have made quite clear, they bear the responsibility of coercing me into something. They also have agency.
posted by ChuraChura at 1:58 PM on January 16, 2018 [57 favorites]

I've just been so upset and sad reading the online conversations about this. It feels like almost all these men who've supported #metoo so far were actually just salivating at the first gray-area opportunity to say how unreasonable it is, and that women are asking for it, and how feminism has gone too far, and and and.

I'm not naive. I expected men to cast doubt on her story and reliability. But I did not expect them to say that even if it happened exactly like she said it did, who cares?

I'm a bisexual woman, techincally. I probably liked men and women about equally, at one point, but ended up only dating women because I found I didn't really enjoy sleeping with men. It's now dawning on me that it's because pretty much every sexual encounter I've had with a guy has been like Grace's. I don't really know if I'd enjoy respectful, caring sex with a man, because I don't think I've ever had it. I never thought about that until now.

The only thing that makes me really happy about all this is the idea of fear slowly blossoming in the hearts of "nice" men who've never considered the way they treat their partners, because they've always assumed it didn't matter and no one besides her would ever know and who cares about her opinion.

Mallory Ortberg wrote a good piece on the topic called "An Email Format That's Getting Weirdly Popular Lately For Some Reason"
posted by Emily's Fist at 1:59 PM on January 16, 2018 [68 favorites]

i think that rules lawyering about legal standards of assault is in the top 3 least important discussion topics in these situations

The problem is when people start using the term "sexual assault," a lot of people automatically hear "throw him in prison." That's why it's helpful to use the term "sexual coercion" to describe abusive-but-not-illegal behavior that falls short of actual assault.
posted by Jacqueline at 2:01 PM on January 16, 2018 [8 favorites]

Ansari was sending mixed messages. He repeatedly seemed to understand that she wasn't interested, and then, when she would calm down, would start being sexually aggressive again.

This.

If Ansari had been purposefully direct in his communication (I’d like to kiss you; my I kiss you? I’d like to touch you here; may I touch you here? Do you like that?) the burden wouldn’t have been on Grace to ensure her intent was clear. And, in my experience, whatever sexual activity occurred would have been a lot more fun for everyone involved.
posted by eustacescrubb at 2:01 PM on January 16, 2018 [19 favorites]

To file under "patriarchy is a helluva drug," I'm always kind of surprised how often some men are willing to force or pressure a blowjob on someone who is not enthusiastically consenting. I mean, he should at least stop for a minute and be clear that he is not intending to get his dick bit off even though he wants to put it in her mouth. How is she to even know?

Ladies, bite it off.

I jest. I kid. Don't be so serious. Maybe we could at least plant some stories in between the murdered women porn that masquerades as "news" and the sports scores about such things happening in the real world.

And the notion that someone on a first "date" putting his fingers in my mouth really triggers a freeze response when I imagine myself in that spot. **shiver**
posted by amanda at 2:04 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

Folks, the thing about "is 'assault' the right word legally speaking" has been raised a number of times and really fully explored at this point -- continuing to go to that well makes it seem like you're either not engaging with previous comments, or are aiming to defend the behavior. So let that point rest now, please.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:05 PM on January 16, 2018 [17 favorites]

Multiple things can be true at once. Women should feel more empowered to say no and walk out; and AA is a shitty, rapey person. "Why didn't she just walk out when she first felt uncomfortable" is an important question to ask -- not in a blaming way (at all), but in an "how can we empower young women to feel entitled to their own desires" way.
posted by yarly at 2:06 PM on January 16, 2018 [20 favorites]

I’m sure this has been said before but let me reiterate: Why is the only conversation we can have the one about ‚guilt‘ (moral or legal)?

Is there *any* interest in the question ‚How can we, as cis men, make sure women have a fulfilling sexual and emotional experience when relating to us?‘ Nope. As soon as they know what they can baaaarely get away with, the conversation is over.

Women are still seen as sexual gratification automatons - just put in slightly different, more modern coins and you‘ll still get what you want (ie, consent).
posted by The Toad at 2:13 PM on January 16, 2018 [37 favorites]

we're literally socialized to treat sex as a weird sort of sales opportunity where if we are pushy enough we can turn a no into a yes.

this.

I was the last guy in my "friend" group in high school to lose my virginity (I lasted until 20). The peer pressure was ruthless, and this was basically the pitch, that if you wanted it enough then it would happen, and if it didn't happen well then you were probably a queer or something. Consent was not covered in this particular lesson plan.

The last few months have forced me to revisit stuff from that period that I had blocked out of my memory, and man, patriarchy fucks men up (I say this as a work-in-progress), then those fucked up men go out and fuck up the world in all kinds of ways. I wish I had been less of a bystander back then because I knew about some truly heinous stuff that people around me had done to no negative consequence. I wish I had some excuse, but I just wanted to forget about the ugliness of the world.

If you are a man reading this and feeling defensive tendencies, please don't comment. Try to repress the pathological need to be right (it does hurt). Just listen, then keep on listening.
posted by dudemanlives at 2:18 PM on January 16, 2018 [42 favorites]

Quoting no one in particular because it's been said enough: "Why didn't she leave? Why did she give in?"

Here's the thing. These men know what they are doing. the person did it to me admitted it! Women are constantly on guard against rape. Being raped is, honestly, more damaging to her image than his. We protect ourselves from being raped as much as we protect ourselves from being a rape victim. Once it became apparent to me that he was going to keep pushing until I gave in, I did what he wanted. It was easier for me to go along with it than to be roughed up and physically forced. Because i knew that's where it was headed.

How did I know that? Well, truthfully I didn't %100 know. But a few weeks later when I did what "i was supposed to do", blatantly said no, pulled away, told him verbally to stop, guess what he did? He physically forced me to give him a hand job. Even though it had become very apparent he was willing to use force, he still kept up with gaslighting. After he physically made me preform on him, I started crying. He whispered "Nothing's going to happen".

I'm going to keep screaming it until my lungs give out These men know what they are doing. They are not interested in engaging in consensual sex. They lure women into a false sense of security. He comes on, you stop him, and he responds with a non-verbal "woops, okay, i understand now. don't worry". and then goes in again, each time reassuring us it'll be the last attempt. This kind of gaslighting serves to both give him what he wants, and also assured that he has plausible deniability that he's doing anything wrong. The mere fact that he kept trying and then backing off is proof that he is more concerned with how his actions are received than how his date is feeling. And, I hate this saying but it applies, if he's not doing anything wrong then what is he trying to hide?
posted by FirstMateKate at 2:18 PM on January 16, 2018 [70 favorites]

women's actual pleasure seems to be even lower down on the List Of Important Sex Things To Men than consent; even the men who do assign an actual importance to it tend to do so because they view it as something that they, the manly man, has singlehandedly brought into being with their manly powers of manitude.
posted by poffin boffin at 2:18 PM on January 16, 2018 [59 favorites]

just put in slightly different, more modern coins and you‘ll still get what you want (ie, consent).

I really do believe the world would be better off if the entirety of negotiating sex became an elaborate Nordic Larp.
posted by Annika Cicada at 2:20 PM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

As for the ethics of publicizing details of a private date, AA is a public figure, a writer-comedian-TV star who talks about being a feminist as part of his brand/persona. He wrote a book on modern dating, FFS. His hypocrisy is 100% valid fodder for public discussion.
posted by msalt at 2:21 PM on January 16, 2018 [49 favorites]

I'm a cis male and this has happened to me before. Several times my date has wanted more sexually from me than I was comfortable with and they would not accept my polite but specific denials. So sometimes I gave in on the 5th attempt because I didn't want to hurt them by shutting everything down and my social anxiety meant I had to try and make them happy. I honestly think they were just trying to reassure me and get past my anxiety, but I did feel coerced because they wouldn't back down.

I'm not sure I'm capable of ever giving "enthusiastic consent" as by some of these definitions my anxiety means that I will always be giving off mixed messages even when I do actually consent. I think one difference between this kind of situation and workplace sexual harassment is that there is inherently ambiguity here and the social signals can sometimes be legitimately hard to read. For me personally I want consent to be explicit and verbal to avoid this, but some women I've been with find that "unsexy" and are really uncomfortable being explicit.

Even given that, Aziz's behavior as described in this piece is outside that grey area and was clearly sexual coercion. But, it's also completely possible that Aziz's perception in the moment was that she was giving full consent, because his brain was lying to him about the signals she was giving off. Our brains kind of suck at this kind of thing and hormones are designed to lie to us, so we have to overcome that through training.

A world with zero sexual assault and zero sexual harassment is a better world for both men and women. I think if we tried to completely eliminate sexual coercion it would do more harm than good, but luckily no one is really advocating for that. "Sexual coercion is usually bad and you should take steps to avoid it" is really not that radical of an opinion, but it does seem to be something men have a hard time accepting
posted by JZig at 2:23 PM on January 16, 2018 [7 favorites]

I've been hanging around a lot of kinky people recently. When it seems like sexytimes are clearly on the table, these people stop and talk about a lot of things. Not just safe words, but boundaries and feelings and consent and expectations. A lot of the time a brief tour of each other's bodies with a lot of talking and not a lot of touching ensues. Gay and bi friends also do more stopping and talking about what kinds of sex are going to be good.

I have never had that kind of conversation ruin the magic or make things worse for anyone. In fact, it is kind of my favorite form of foreplay. (fore-fore-play?) Not only do you go into nookie with a much better idea of what to do with these people, but you also discover new things all the time.

(I'm not saying any particular preferences are proof against being an asshole or running into one. I am saying, however, that this practice is one worth adopting.)
posted by poe at 2:28 PM on January 16, 2018 [30 favorites]

I think if we tried to completely eliminate sexual coercion it would do more harm than good, but luckily no one is really advocating for that.

*raises hand* Uh, I am. I am vehemently wishing for a world where sexual coercion is non-existent. It's a pipe dream, but I can't understand what harm would befall the world if we fought to have no one coerced sexually.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 2:29 PM on January 16, 2018 [57 favorites]

After skirting this story for awhile, I read it, and I'm kind of baffled at the attempt to put this in "a gray area." It may or may not be assault, but that doesn't matter. Like, at all.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 2:29 PM on January 16, 2018 [14 favorites]

but it does seem to be something men have a hard time accepting

Because for men it means accepting that they will have less sex. And not see it as an abstract concept, but as a concrete one with a real person on the other side that refuses.
posted by FJT at 2:35 PM on January 16, 2018 [7 favorites]

I think one difference between this kind of situation and workplace sexual harassment is that there is inherently ambiguity here and the social signals can sometimes be legitimately hard to read.

If only we humans had some other means of asking for consent than nonverbal signals. Imagine if Ansari could have just directly stated his intentions and asked to know hers? Man, if that were something humans could do, that’d be so cool.
posted by eustacescrubb at 2:39 PM on January 16, 2018 [17 favorites]

I've seen several takes on this where people say "if these men only knew that enthusiastic consent makes sex even better!" For most people this is true, but I don't think men who push the line would prefer an enthusiastic partner. I believe they specifically get off on overcoming a woman's unwillingness. I wonder what Ansari would have done if she was totally into it. Would he lose interest? A lot of women I know have stories about guys ghosting them after they've had sex. They're not always rapists/assaulters, but many men are in it for the chase and conquest.
posted by AFABulous at 2:40 PM on January 16, 2018 [37 favorites]

Because for men it means accepting that they will have less sex.

Or even no sex, depending on the situation. And be completely okay with it. And as a man, I'm not saying this is some impossible feat. It's normal existence.

Lord Humongous is right: "Just walk away."
posted by FJT at 2:44 PM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

are people just reading to the kitchen counter part of the night and saying "ok, got the gist" and skipping the entire rest of it?
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:44 PM on January 16, 2018 [7 favorites]

Does anyone have a sense of why an article came out of this?

This is why it was published on Babe.net. The vast majority of news sources would not publish a first-person anonymous account without corroboration.
posted by girlmightlive at 2:45 PM on January 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

Once again, men understand verbal and nonverbal nos in every situation except, according to them, sex and dating. His brain wasn't lying to him. He didn't perceive that she was an enthusiastic participant. He purposefully pushed past her nos to get what he wanted. He didn't oopsie and repeatedly sexually violate her. There's also zero chance this is the first time he did it.

My point is that the advantage of verbal nos is that they are hard to misunderstand. The reason I ask for verbal consent is specifically because I have a hard time interpreting nonverbal nos. I agree this is probably not the first time he did this, and I also agree that he should be blamed for it and held accountable. It's quite possible that you're right and he did know exactly what he was doing but it's also possible that he doesn't, it's pretty hard for us to know from the outside.

It's a pipe dream, but I can't understand what harm would befall the world if we fought to have no one coerced sexually.

Fighting to have a world where no one is coerced sexually is a good idea! We'd never get to the "perfect world" with 0 and there's far too much of it now. We could theoretically "go too far" where anxious people or those who cannot give consent via the "approved" method are legally barred from having sex. That's the kind of world some men are afraid of that leads to them making terrible "slippery slope" arguments.
posted by JZig at 2:45 PM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

""how can we empower young women to feel entitled to their own desires" way." By teaching men that it is actually ok for a woman to not want to have sex with them even if she likes them? Of course most men who are skilled at demanding sex just say "Well sure they're free to not have sex and men are free to not talk to women who won't give them sex right away".

I mean I've had this conversation and the more open I get the more men just say "well I just want easy sex right away" which is fine, they can want what they want and I can want what I want. But because I see this happening so much where women are dealing with this battle of men trying to make them put out and then this pseudoenlightened "Well men and women all want sex just the same and that's empowering so demanding sex on a first date or within a few dates is just the same as for women" It's missing something that I actually don't think it IS the same for women to have sex right away and it's not just some "evo-psych" thing, but like being penetrated is scary and likely to hurt- it can lead to pregnancy which is a YOUR WHOLE LIFE altered, which can lead to death. And once a guy is on top of you whatever they decide to do you have very little power to stop it, so if you tend to be someone on the bottom or physically less strong, the whole experience is very vulnerable making. Like-- I feel like there might be legitimate reasons that more women than men might need an emotional commitment of trust before becoming vulnerable like? To build loving relationships first? But somehow those kinds of needs get laughed at as evo-psych stereotypes only to then shove women into the assumed model they will provide immediate non-committal sex with men right away and it will be super empowering and help women get over their old baggage of thinking they need a relationship or love to be happy in sex. Like it's like the idea of empowerment is turned around on women and used to tell them that IF their desires DO match the old bad model of women being more emotional and wanting love and commitment- that is a shameful hangup to the past and she needs to become more enlightened and modern. And you know, give guys the kind of sex they want the way they want it. Because uh, women empowerment and stuff.

The whole idea that women's sexual empowerment means that women need to have no attachment or needs beyond just "sex" or that the playing field is actually level enough that as long as men and women just say what they want and bounce if they don't get their demands everything will be equal... I really don't know that matches the reality.
posted by xarnop at 2:46 PM on January 16, 2018 [37 favorites]

It's quite possible that you're right and he did know exactly what he was doing but it's also possible that he doesn't, it's pretty hard for us to know from the outside.

You're right, but the 2nd part is leaving something out. It's not just "well maybe he didn't know she didn't want it", it's also "he's comfortable having sex with women whether or not he knows what they want". Which, how can anyone defend that?
posted by FirstMateKate at 2:51 PM on January 16, 2018 [28 favorites]

Does anyone have a sense of why an article came out of this?

I do, because Babe answered that question directly and several people in this thread have discussed why they think that the article is valuable. Agree or not, the "why" has been addressed.

abusively overeager while adhering to minimal consent are able to reform themselves without a public airing of grievance

There is something about this framing that really rubs me the wrong way. I think it's the use of "overeager," a word that's more often used to describe puppies than abusers--a word that also elides that eagerness isn't the problem; the problem is a complete disregard for the wellbeing of the woman involved, a disregard that is cultivated and enabled by rape culture.

I don't think men who push the line would prefer an enthusiastic partner

I dunno. I think there are both types of men out there. I have no doubt that there are many men who want the fantasy of conquering an unwilling (and therefore not "slutty," btw) woman. One only has to look at all of toxic shit that is out there in popular culture and porn. But I also think it doesn't take that for this kind of scenario to happen, all it takes is selfishness and entitlement.

I mean, I think you have a good point, but I don't really like it being the only narrative about these men because then it's easy for men who don't have that kind of fantasy to say, "Well, that's not me."
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:54 PM on January 16, 2018 [6 favorites]

It's quite possible that you're right and he did know exactly what he was doing but it's also possible that he doesn't, it's pretty hard for us to know from the outside.

Here's the whatever from his published, non-fiction book Modern Romance

For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern Romance, the book, he decided he needed to take things to another level. He teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages. They enlisted the world’s leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry Turkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike any social science or humor book we’ve seen before.

posted by griphus at 2:55 PM on January 16, 2018 [13 favorites]

he's comfortable having sex with women whether or not he knows what they want

From my own personal psych research, unfortunately the brain is pretty bad at knowing rather it knows things, and there's a lot of biases that make your brain too confident, especially when your hormones get involved. So it's completely possible that someone in this situation will be 100% certain that the other person wants it, while also being 100% wrong.

People who have been educated about how the brain works or gone through self-reflection should know better than that though, and especially given griphus's point I agree that Aziz specifically should know better. Yeah, you're both right that I'm giving Aziz too much credit here
posted by JZig at 2:59 PM on January 16, 2018 [7 favorites]

I'm not sure I'm capable of ever giving "enthusiastic consent" as by some of these definitions my anxiety means that I will always be giving off mixed messages even when I do actually consent. ...

We could theoretically "go too far" where anxious people or those who cannot give consent via the "approved" method are legally barred from having sex. That's the kind of world some men are afraid of that leads to them making terrible "slippery slope" arguments.

You said it - slippery slope arguments are indeed terrible. So why are you bringing them here?

If your "mixed messages" are anywhere close to saying, verbally, literally, "I'm not comfortable with this", as the woman in this scenario did, nobody should be having sex with you, whether or not their "perception in the moment" is that you secretly want to, deep down inside.

Verbal communication isn't always needed to be on the same page, but if ever you aren't sure whether your partner is happy (not willing) to do all the sexy things...that's the time to use your words. Nobody has suggested anything remotely close to defining an "approved" method for obtaining consent - if you suck at reading people, like I do, it just means you have to be aware of it, pay attention to your partner's reactions, and make sure any ambiguity is resolved. Verbally, if you have to, but there are many ways. It really isn't that hard.
posted by randomnity at 3:03 PM on January 16, 2018 [13 favorites]

I am super confident what men who sexually violate women know and think because I have been under many of them and hear what they say and how they act before, during, and after. Men are all the time telling women that we don't really understand men, but we understand men better than their best closest friends because we see them when the door closes. We see them when they know they'll get away with it.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 3:04 PM on January 16, 2018 [40 favorites]

This article was valuable to me as a woman because it’s so unusual to see representations of this kind of behavior even though it’s in my experience really common. Like the cat woman story it was tough to read but I think there is a important conversation to be had and it needs to start with women being able to tell the stories of their lived experience and if that means we have lose some male celebrities along the way I don’t think it’s such a big loss.
posted by SpaceWarp13 at 3:05 PM on January 16, 2018 [18 favorites]

I don't know how much the average grown man who is fully capable of educating himself if he chose to would get from being exposed to consent negotiation techniques but yes, we sure as hell should be teaching it to kids.

And yes, the reason this stuff has to be written about in detail is because a certain segment of the population, when asked to do the emotional labor of caring that their sex partner is interested and capable and having a good time, decide that "enthusiastic consent" means anything beyond "being actually dead for at least several hours" or "bursting into flames".
posted by Lyn Never at 3:10 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

I don't understand why so many people (not here obviously) are wringing their hands in concern about the article. There's no way that Aziz is going to face any legal consequences for this: he's just embarrassed and (I hope) feels bad about the encounter. But that's totally appropriate! His date feels bad and embarrassed about it! It's totally fair, it's as though the 2018 scriptwriters wanted an example of karmic balancing. The alternative would be his date feeling bad and embarrassed, and Aziz facing literally no consequences. I guess I want to ask his defenders (again, not here), why do you want to protect Aziz from the consequences of his behaviour? And how do you propose to protect other women from someone who's apparently something of a missing stair?
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:26 PM on January 16, 2018 [24 favorites]

We should be teaching it to kids. We should also be presenting it in our movies and TV shows because if your school and parents say one thing and TV something else then I know which one most people will listen to.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:28 PM on January 16, 2018

I am (kind of) glad that I was sufficiently awkward, timid and socially malformed as a young man as to be largely separated from the dating scene and hookup cultures. (I certainly was not glad THEN.) Being scared shitless of rejection is one way to end up both expecting and honoring "no"s, learning some patience and treasuring when things did work out well. And I don't want a cookie for those, because those things aren't hurdles to overcome, they're a two-inch curb that everyone should be able to get past.

And even then, I have red on my ledger. I know I do. I can think back to certain events and certain people and cringe hard at what I did or said; even if it wasn't physical violation it was sometimes unpleasant or emotionally abusive. Where manly mighty prick-swinging men may just plunge ahead and ignore withheld consent, timid ones may look at women like puzzles to be solved. I know I'm close to what I want [NARRATOR: He wasn't.], so if I turn it this way, say this, do that, give this, move this sliding piece here, aaaaaaaaaand there! A winner is me! [NARRATOR: He wasn't.] Some of us grow out of that mentality. Many of us don't.
posted by delfin at 3:30 PM on January 16, 2018 [24 favorites]

are people just reading to the kitchen counter part of the night and saying "ok, got the gist" and skipping the entire rest of it?

A lot of the summaries online have straight-up omitted or elided several of the most problematic parts. Then many people haven't even read the original account, but are just reacting to the snippets they've heard.

I've heard people claiming that she didn't say no (she did, several times) or that he stops once she does say no (he doesn't). He's still trying to unzip her pants after she said no to sex and gotten dressed and agreed to his suggestion that they hang out fully clothed. He's still trying to kiss her after she's said "you fucking men are all the same" and left the room to call a cab. He's still trying to kiss and hug her as she's leaving. Literally the only sense in which he "stops" is by not physically preventing her from leaving the apartment after she decides to leave.

The wildest thing to me is that he texts her the next day that it was "fun meeting you." I don't know about men these days, but if I'm hanging out with a girl and think we're having fun hooking up and then she makes a comment about how "you're all the fucking same" and leaves the room to call a cab... I'd be like, dang, I think I fucked this up! I would probably text her something like "hey I hope you got home okay" or "you seemed upset, I hope I didn't push any boundaries" or "hey are we cool?" Not that I had fun. Christ.
posted by Emily's Fist at 3:34 PM on January 16, 2018 [70 favorites]

Finally got around to watching the video clip of him talking about feminism. Ugh. Is this what passes for "ally" in the media today?

If you look up “feminist” in the dictionary, it just means someone who believes men and women have equal rights, and I feel like everyone here believes men and women have equal rights, yes?
...
This is another test, okay? You're feminist if you go to a Jay-Z and Beyonce concert and you're not, like, “I feel like Beyonce should get 23 percent less money than Jay-Z. Also, I don't think Beyonce should have the right to vote. And why is Beyonce singing and dancing? Shouldn't she make Jay a steak? I'm sure he's very tired after walking and rapping those two songs.”

So, he thinks a "feminist" is anyone who doesn't agree with the direct, visible oppression of women, and who thinks that men and women "have equal rights." It's not clear whether he means "should have equal legal rights" or "have equal moral rights" or if he thinks we've already achieved full equality and anyone not trying to remove that is a feminist.

He claims to be a feminist because he supports Beyonce's right to vote. There is just so much wrong with that.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:37 PM on January 16, 2018 [12 favorites]

"Why didn't she leave? Why did she give in?"

Yo a esta sazón hice un breve discurso conmigo, y me dije a mí mesma: «Sí, que no seré yo la primera que por vía de matrimonio haya subido de humilde a grande estado, ni será don Fernando el primero a quien hermosura, o ciega afición, que es lo más cierto, haya hecho tomar compañía desigual a su grandeza. Pues si no hago ni mundo ni uso nuevo, bien es acudir a esta honra que la suerte me ofrece, puesto que en este no dure más la voluntad que me muestra de cuanto dure el cumplimiento de su deseo; que, en fin, para con Dios seré su esposa. Y si quiero con desdenes despedilleXXI, en término le veo que, no usando el que debe, usará el de la fuerza, y vendré a quedar deshonrada y sin disculpa de la culpa que me podrá dar el que no supiere cuán sin ella he venido a este punto: porque ¿qué razones serán bastantes para persuadir a mis padres, y a otros, que este caballero entró en mi aposento sin consentimiento mío?».

At this time I had a brief talk with myself, and I said to myself: "Yes, I will not be the first to have risen from a humble to a great state by marriage, nor will Don Fernando be the first one for whom beauty, or blind affection, which is truer here, has made [a man] take company unequal to his own status. Well, since I'm not making a new world or a new use [of sex] here, it is good to take this honor that luck offers me, since in this his volition will not last longer than the fulfillment of his desire; that, in short, by God I will be his wife. And if I disdainfully try to dismiss him, in the end I see that he will not use [the method] which he ought, but will use force, and I will come to be dishonored and without apology for the guilt that he will give me, he who does not understand how I have come to this point: because what reasons will be enough to persuade my parents, and others, that this gentleman entered my room without my consent?"

Don Quixote, Part I, Chapter XXVIII, published in 1605.

1605. I read this chapter last night and thought, the first modern novel indeed. We're still there.
posted by chainsofreedom at 3:40 PM on January 16, 2018 [54 favorites]

When I read these stories, and the vast number of people blaming women for the actions of men again, I always wonder why men hate themselves so much that they can't imagine being better than this - that their worry instantly goes to "but what if there were consequences for my actions" and not "we need to be better to other people".

And then I remember these men benefit from this - they benefit from describing themselves as insensible, unimaginative, unintelligent animals who just can't help themselves and certainly can't understand "no" because it means they get to do what they want without any consequences.

It means they have power.

Hell, I have exit strategies when I meet new male coworkers in an unfamiliar office.

I have exit strategies any time I'm in a remote place with a man. One of the scarier things that ever happened to me was at a bus stop on an isolated road when a 50+ man decided my high school self would make a fantastic wife.
posted by Deoridhe at 3:41 PM on January 16, 2018 [29 favorites]

I just can not make up my mind about this. I've been there several times, where you state flat out, "No I don't want to have sex with you, ever." Then the guy just keeps the pressure on, and for whatever reasons you aren't able to immediately get out of the situation, so you do something like a blow job, or even wind up consenting to sex against your own wishes. And yes, the guys absolutely know that the woman doesn't want to do what she's just been coerced into doing.

I'm incredibly glad we are talking about it. Incredibly glad women don't have to feel badly anymore because they can see now that it happens all the time. For myself, I wouldn't call what happened to me rape, though it was certainly sex/sexual acts I performed against my will. Speaking only for myself, I think the distinction is in the numbers of people responsible for the fact that a woman is being forced to do sexual things against her will. In a rape I can squarely put the responsibility /blame on a rapist who heard no and did it anyway. Even our shitty rape culture is pretty clear that when she says no way, and you hold her down and force her, you're the bad guy. But in this other situation there's more than one person responsible in my opinion. I blame the guy, definitely. I blame the society that encourages and rewards him for behaving this way, for teaching him to view women as things to be exploited rather than people to be respected, and I blame those who should have supported the woman, and raised her to believe in herself, who failled her so utterly in that regard. Anyone who taught her that it was her fault for "leading him on" by dressing or talking or even smiling in a certain way . Anyone who failed to support her when she tried to figure out her own way of being in the world. Did you call her a slut when found out how many people shed slept with? Well I blane you too. Did you criticize the way she dressed or talked, or her intelligence, or her children or lack of children? Did you tell her to smile when she didn't fucking feel like smiling? Did you pay her less than you paid a man doing the same job? I mean the list could go on and on. When we fail to support women in any way, we are responsible when shit like this happens.

Well I guess I've solved my own conundrum. Whatever you choose to call it, it definitely belongs in the #metoo and #timesup movements, and people coming forward with these stories deserve our support not our condemnation. May they continue to come forward so that we can have these discussions, and name the monster, whether its name be rape or something else, it is unacceptable and it must stop.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 3:49 PM on January 16, 2018 [11 favorites]

On OKC there is a multiple choice question that asks:
"During sexual activities you notice your partner staring off into space, bored. Do you stop?"

Any man who answers "no" to this is immediately off my list of possible dates. Why? Because, to me, this means that the man doesn't want to have sex with someone. He wants to have sex to someone. He feels no need to stop whatever he's doing if it's clear his partner isn't enjoying themselves. And, he's comfortable enough with this thought that he's willing to tell the very women he wants to have sex with that he feels this way.

Let me tell you, a frightening large number of men answer "no" to the question.
posted by mcduff at 3:49 PM on January 16, 2018 [39 favorites]

I don't know how much the average grown man who is fully capable of educating himself if he chose to would get from being exposed to consent negotiation techniques but yes, we sure as hell should be teaching it to kids.

Okay, it's not a negotiation, first, but yes, it's easy to teach kids:

1. You have to ask if people want to play with you before you aim the Nerf gun at them/jump into the soccer game.
2. We don't take food off each other's plates. (Basic drive, hunger.)
3. My son's attending his first school dance, so I've told him you ask before you put your hands on anyone if they would like you to, and if they don't say yes in a way that sounds like a happy yes, you don't.
4. Soon we will discuss how he needs to practice words like "I'd like to kiss you, would you like that?" and "I'm thinking of getting naked, how are you feeling?"

I also work where we train teenage boys as instructors and none of them have ever been confused by being told "you have to ask before you put your hands on anyone." (Which is actually uncommon anyway, but.)

The thing is, men have been learning about consent forever. There is no special training required, unless you are a person who grabs chocolate bars out of the hands of your friends when you want a sweet rather than asking them for a piece.

So on the one hand, yes, things are mess culturally around sex.

But learning how consent works is not the problem.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:49 PM on January 16, 2018 [57 favorites]

I think if we tried to completely eliminate sexual coercion it would do more harm than good, but luckily no one is really advocating for that.

I can't even wrap my brain around this. How would eliminating sexual coercion do "more harm than good"? Seriously.
posted by Lexica at 4:18 PM on January 16, 2018 [42 favorites]

Lexica, I've been so flabbergasted at that comment that I couldn't think of how to even address it.
posted by agregoli at 4:20 PM on January 16, 2018 [9 favorites]

The only way it remotely made sense to me is if the commenter meant to eliminate it by criminalizing it. I'm not sure I want the notoriously effective criminal justice system involved, either, because it already regularly shits the bed when it comes to plain rape.
posted by axiom at 4:23 PM on January 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

I know someone whose response once to an apology containing “I didn’t mean to hurt you” was to reply “we’ll sure but you didn’t mean not to hurt me either.”

I feel like that a lot of people think that because he didn’t mean to hurt her she should be ok with the fact that he didn’t mean not to hurt her either.
posted by eustacescrubb at 4:27 PM on January 16, 2018 [26 favorites]

This Twitter thread has some insightful ways of looking at this.

Here's a thing: the people who are insistent that the sexual assaults being described by survivors are actually "just bad sex" seem pretty blase about the fact that (from their point of view) there's an epidemic of men giving sex so bad it leaves women traumatized and confused.

Imagine [you partly own] a pizza place whose delivery drivers, while not technically breaking any laws in a way that could be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, so thoroughly intimidated clients into large tips that some of those clients had to think about whether they'd been robbed.

What do you do about it? Argue with each and every client complaining of robbery that it wasn't technically a crime? That they handed over the money? That if they were so afraid they could have fought? How many of those fights do you think you have to win to save your company?

I mean, if I found out that the way that I interact with cashiers at a grocery store left some of them sobbing and shaking as soon as I was out of sight, and I had thought I was being a pleasant and normal customer, I would be interrogating my behavior rather than the cashiers.

"There's no sexual assault crisis, it's just that perfectly normal sex where everything happens as expected is going to leave a certain number of women who willingly participated in it traumatized some percent of the time. Goes with the territory."

Really. That's your takeaway?

posted by straight at 4:35 PM on January 16, 2018 [101 favorites]

maxsparber: Usually I don't want to bring men's experiences into this, because it can be a distraction. But men, in general, are the creators of this problem, and men, in general, should be the ones to fix it.

dudemanlives: man, patriarchy fucks men up (I say this as a work-in-progress), then those fucked up men go out and fuck up the world in all kinds of ways.

Yeah. The patriarchy does fuck men up. Toxic masculinity fucks men up. Men should be the ones to fix it.

One major reason, like what Emily Reynolds says in one of the linked post articles, is because the (horrible) norms of consent and dating culture are oriented around men pushing, women withholding. Men are encouraged to make the first move, to try to convince women into sex, or at the very least, it is hammered into men's minds that nothing will happen if men don't make the first move.

This leads to all kinds of toxic methods as young men in their teens and early 20s learn to cope with fear of rejection and of being unwanted, in all the worst ways. To me, the cultures of machismo and chest-thumping bro-bravado arise directly from men's fear around this process - the fear becomes suppressed and transformed into horrible ways of thinking: objectification of women, mechanizing everything into a 'game' or as 'strategies', et cetera. Or ignoring emotion by "manning up".

Responsible, ethical, just change by men for men needs to be getting to one of the roots of the issue, openly acknowledging these fears and finding healthy ways to deal with them.

After all: It's scary! It's scary to feel unwanted, and unloved. It's scary to make the first move. It's scary to like someone and have them not like you back.

And the fact that it's scary is completely normal, and worth talking about.

Men need to have a culture where it's normal that it's okay to be scared, and it's not okay to behave or act in violent, angry ways based on that fear. Men really need to change masculinity culture (and/or to eliminate masculinity as a concept) in a way that healthily deals with it.
posted by suedehead at 4:37 PM on January 16, 2018 [26 favorites]

I can't even wrap my brain around this. How would eliminating sexual coercion do "more harm than good"? Seriously.

I assumed it meant that attempts to 100% eliminate a complex problem require such extreme action they're impractical. I was going to say I charitably assumed that, but it's a good tactic for forcing debates to extremes so you can minimise discussion of or discredit by association reasonable measures. Or where you just don't have much skin in the game and are viewing it all as an intellectual exercise. Either way I don't feel very charitable about it.
posted by SometimeNextMonth at 4:47 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

And I think a lot of the pushback comes from the fact that men want rape to be something tangible and specific, and not a spectrum of behavior that violates consent. It's the same way white people want racism to be the guy in the hood, which is easy to identify and point out and declare you would never be that, and you can wash your hands of it and say, thank God, I am not a racist.

I think maxsparber's comment upthread is right on - it's uncomfortable to realize that large entrenched societal problems might be partly your problem, and you are not exempt simply because you deplore the Klan or voted for Hillary or whatever.

I also feel like on this, and many other sensitive topics involving structural societal problems, many people approach them with a newfound zeal to play amateur legal scholar, making impassioned arguments for everything from the sanctity of the mens rea requirement to the public policy implications of "criminalizing flirting." The result is that, finding that the offense can't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the hot-take giver sorrowfully concludes that that's just the way things have to be.

But I think the better analysis would follow more of a First Amendment one. There are many kinds and forms of speech about which the best thing that can be said is that it's not literally illegal. Like the Westboro Baptist Church, to pick but one of countless examples. These types of speech are legal but society, for the most part, condemns them, recognizes the hurt that they cause, and adjusts their opinion of the speaker accordingly.

I have, unfortunately, had many experiences that are on the spectrum of what the Babe article described. For the most part, I do not think a legal remedy is the appropriate one. But I would like to see this kind of behavior treated not simply as normal, what-did-you-expect, but for it to be scorned and those who perpetuate it treated the way we treat people who choose to say offensive and hurtful things.
posted by Aubergine at 4:51 PM on January 16, 2018 [12 favorites]

Urban dictionary's top definition of claw is a variation of the shocker( which by choice of word doesn't seem consensual). Nothing about fingers down the throat.
posted by brujita at 5:07 PM on January 16, 2018

Worth noting that in this and the USA Gymnastics thread, no one spoke because everyone knew it was happening to everyone else, which made/makes it incredibly difficult to speak up and make oneself a target.
posted by Sophie1 at 5:15 PM on January 16, 2018 [8 favorites]

re: teaching kids about consent. I agree with the comment above that boys and men already grasp the concept of consent. I was in an emotionally abusive marriage and I finally got that it was abusive when my therapist said "does he talk to his boss the way he talks to you? no? Then he has control over his actions." Boys understand that they're not supposed to take the toy away from another boy, even if they do it anyway. Men understand consent just fine. Some just don't think that women are people. That's the real problem.
posted by AFABulous at 5:15 PM on January 16, 2018 [74 favorites]

So, if the lose-your-career-over-it line moves somewhere near this Ansari thing, how many men need to lose their careers? And, if the answer is "a significant percentage", what does that look like, practically and culturally?

culturally - the number of women in leadership positions in the arts finally comes up to about 50%. I don't consider that to be a problem, anyone else?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:23 PM on January 16, 2018 [29 favorites]

Sorry for the double comment -- I have to rewrite that one:

In August 1975, Rolling Stone published "The Trial of Arline Hunt," a story (with all identifying details changed) by Ellen Willis about a rape survivor who could not get justice.

That story includes unattributed quotes from a consciousness-raising session on rape. One that has stuck with me:

... While he was raping me, I started getting the strangest feeling that all this was somehow familiar. I realized that it wasn't so different from times I'd fucked guys I didn't really want to fuck because I couldn't think of a graceful way to refuse ...

When I read which chick's comment on this post -- "The number of men I've had sex with so that they would shut up and go away is nonzero. It's embarrassingly nonzero" -- it really hit home for me that all these years later, we are still fighting the same. Damn. Battles.
posted by virago at 6:02 PM on January 16, 2018 [32 favorites]

I'm always shocked how many people become concerned about the jobs and steady income of the very wealthy whenever a story like this breaks. Countless people have had their careers or potential careers ruined for far less.
posted by AtoBtoA at 6:30 PM on January 16, 2018 [28 favorites]

He says, "we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual." Except that no, not all indications, if her account is anywhere close to the truth (and I believe her unequivocally).

From the Babe article:
'But the main thing was that he wouldn’t let her move away from him. She compared the path they cut across his apartment to a football play. “It was 30 minutes of me getting up and moving and him following..."'

'...she says she used verbal and non-verbal cues to indicate how uncomfortable and distressed she was.'

So fuck you, Ansari, and your 'all indications'. That's exactly how my sexual assault happened too.
posted by twilightlost at 6:35 PM on January 16, 2018 [19 favorites]

(Embarrassingly nonzero here too. Age 41 and not sure I can think of a single relationship that didn't have at least one coercive sexual encounter.)

I saw Ansari do a "surprise" stand up set at a small venue a couple years ago. One of those venues and one of those sets that comedians do when they're in town for a bigger billing and/or working out some material. Anyway, much of his set was about sex and relationships, which was fine. Part of it was about porn, and he got into generalizations about women using porn. He kept insisting that women use porn too (which, fine) and then asked the women in the audience who used porn to raise their hands.

And when some of them didn't raise their hands, he alternated between pleading with and chastising them, saying they were lying and c'mon of course you do everyone does, ha ha ha. Like, for an uncomfortable amount of time. And then he started calling on the women who did have their hands up and demanding they tell everyone where they get their porn; like what their favorite websites were or whatever.

I get that comedy is about making generalizations like "haha isn't it funny how women don't admit to using porn but we all know they do" but the way he demanded the audience participate in and confirm this generalization, to a person, and the way he didn't leave room for anyone to have a different life and experience, always left a bad taste in my mouth. It's the part of his set I remember most, and not fondly.

Which is not to say I knew anything about his actual personal life and sexual behavior, but let's just say that this awful story didn't surprise me in any way other than the woman's willingness to tell it.
posted by misskaz at 6:49 PM on January 16, 2018 [32 favorites]

I can't imagine that the lose-your-career line actually settles out here, even if maybe it should.
posted by gurple at 12:44 PM on January 16 [+] [!]

Naw. we are most definitely not in the settling out period. we are in the wave and the beginning of the backlash period.

gurple, i really appreciate your line of questioning, because I feel like that this is or will become the most important part of the conversation--why shouldn't the "lose-your-career" line settle out at somewhere closer to 50:50 parity? Is "lose-your-career" necessary to get to 50:50 parity? Why should we be so defensive about moving toward an equal society? Let's talk about all that! How did other societies achieve such? Was it gradual? all at once?

(do we not feel the best about that goal because most of our workplaces are shitty and authoritarian, so that replacing women into 50% of CEO jobs doesn't seem like enough for a good economy?)

I'm scared that this movement for good can lose the narrative; the backlash has well started.

USA has individualist tendencies that will push this movement further into gossip mongering, we can't control that industry of obsessing over the crimes and pains of certain remote people whom we already knew kinda sucked. When the real work, I feel, is self-transformation, work within family and friends.

And that gets much more complicated. Women perpetuate shitty non-consensual rape culture as well, it's just the stakes are just so much lower when men are coerced into sex, and workplace imbalances so skewed, that it's not news if a lady does it, or even if she gets fired or a man comes out with abuse against him--it's not going to filter into his career as much, or even home life. It doesn't correct that society-wide imbalance immediately, even though I think it's very important for men and women to really internalize what women are saying when they say #metoo.

Celebrities are important inasmuch as these are the people writing our cultural narratives. But as individuals, they are only as important as their own community. These public apologies can be pretty unsatisfying, if they move neither the economic needle nor the personal needle--what does Grace need? and what does Aziz need to really fucking learn? What do their friends and family need to support them, because in the end, the internet is not going to help with this part.

It seems like we are in that moment of men asking "Is this me? Is this my workplace?" which is exactly where it should be, for a while. But there's only so much the big lawsuits can do.

I feel like the backlash will take hold, only as much as we lose sight of the collective goals--we want a society where women can participate equally, where this doesn't happen in the first place, at least enough that women ascend to leadership roles in workplaces. It seems like the cultural production workplaces in our economy are extraordinarily important, but I'm, personally, not invested in these people, and neither are most people in the USA.

(look at the sexual segregation of the fossil fuel industry, or construction, or farm labor, where are the stories of those celebs, workers, engenues and CEOs?)

There's a lot of work we can be doing on ourselves, with our own communities, with these public narratives. For every Grace and Aziz, or the ten people around them that really love them. I feel like the Jill Filipovic article is scratching at this, but can't quite get there, because the story of truth and reconciliation isn't really for public consumption in a magazine, necessarily.

anyway, this is too long, here's a bunch of transformative justice readings
[undercurrentvic.files.wordpress.com] »

here's a great read, don't read my post, read this by these ladies it's a fav that you all made me think of in particular
[www.transformativejustice.eu] »

ten principles
recognize the humanity of everyone involved

prioritize the self determination of the survivor

identify a simultaneous plan for safety and support of the survivor as well as others in the
community

carefully consider the consequences of your strategy

organize collectively

make sure the accountability seeking group is on the same page with their political analysis of sexual violence

be clear and specific about what your group wants from the aggressor in terms of accountability

let the aggressor know your analysis and your demands

consider help from the aggressor's friends, family, and people close to her

prepare to be engaged in the process for the long haul
posted by eustatic at 6:56 PM on January 16, 2018 [10 favorites]

On Aziz Ansari And "Bad Sex", Katie Anthony

I've taken that cab, crying. And I've taken that shower. And I would never have told the story, because I would have been afraid of someone thinking, "That's not that bad," the way I just fucking did. I don't have to imagine what happened to Grace because I remember it.

This is complicated.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:16 PM on January 16, 2018 [19 favorites]

Thing is, he doesn't *have* to "lose his career" or anything like that. He could take this as an opportunity for some self-reflection, try to put himself in the other person's shoes, work on his empathy, and realize that hey, if you have to talk somebody into doing something it means that they don't want to do it and even if you don't believe that's the letter of non-consent it certainly is the spirit of it. He could get himself to the point where he can offer a sincere apology. Instead, he's choosing to double down on his patriarchal privilege and it generally be an asshole about it. If that makes people not want to consume his product, he only has himself to blame.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:37 PM on January 16, 2018 [11 favorites]

I've gotten into two exhausting arguments about Aziz Ansari today, tiring and awful arguments. And one thing that keeps coming up is that she should have left, she should have been more forceful with her NO, that she has agency, that clearly an unequivocal no should be respected but in absence of that he couldn't have known.

I keep thinking about my assault (I didn't even call it that until this year, just a weird...thing that happened, that I didn't want, with a boy I liked, but he'd told me he probably had hepatitis, and we were in a tent with my best friend and his cousin, and he did stop when I said no but then when I finally went to sleep hours later I woke up to him masturbating against me anyway and like...I continued to be involved with this boy for over a year after, on and off, which felt like it somehow excused it even though now as an adult I know it didn't) and how right after, for what felt like a lifetime, I had one of the worst panic attacks of my life, just sat there trembling and trembling, unable to speak or move. I keep thinking about this article, about how even in the most violent of rapes people go limp or numb or silent and this is totally normal. Today someone asked me "Are you saying people can perpetuate a sexual assault unknowingly?" and like, yes, yes they can if we are to assume that a partner who is limp, moving away from us, not making eye contact, fearful, mumbling, silent is somehow consenting. And that is part of the problem.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:42 PM on January 16, 2018 [44 favorites]

And when some of them didn't raise their hands, he alternated between pleading with and chastising them... he started calling on the women who did have their hands up and demanding they tell everyone where they got their porn

This is basically exactly what happened in the encounter too. The pleading for gratification, the coersion, and the humiliation (the "claw", that weird pantomime in front of the mirror, calling her cab using the name Essence).
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 7:42 PM on January 16, 2018 [8 favorites]

I am perplexed that there is a question of whether or not this was assaultive.

Obviously, we live in a rape culture. I'm not saying I don't understand why Redpill Ryan on reddit or Deflective Aunt Diane on facebook are dismissing Grace's experience. What I don't get is that a number of people I know, people whom I otherwise respect, are now saying, "I dunno..." and picking apart this woman's story like neophyte legal scholars, because strict legality is now what matters*. Somehow all the #metoo stories up until now were terrible, but this is shrugworthy? (*FWIW, I'm no lawyer, but wouldn't this incident fail to meet the "Yes Means Yes" standard of consent in California? This incident didn't occur there, but it would have been legally nonconsensual in at least one state.)

Is it that people don't think Ansari was in a position of power? Because he was in a position of power. He was a celebrity; she was a young female not-celebrity. Of course, to me this makes no difference - power imbalance or not, this was coercive and therefore not consensual. But I'm now thinking that many people "supportive" of #metoo were perhaps only concerned by misdeeds that occurred within the context of a strict power imbalance. I don't usually overestimate people's ability to think outside black and white rubrics, but I suppose I fell prey to optimism this time.
posted by desert outpost at 8:02 PM on January 16, 2018 [11 favorites]

Am curious, desert outpost, are the "number of people I know, people whom I otherwise respect, now saying, 'I dunno...'" women or men?
posted by PhineasGage at 8:07 PM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

EmpressCallipygos: culturally - the number of women in leadership positions in the arts finally comes up to about 50%. I don't consider that to be a problem, anyone else?

I think I got misinterpreted a couple times because I was unclear. I didn't mean that tossing a bunch of male entertainers would be such a horrible loss to society.

I meant actually that throwing out a large percentage of male entertainers would have a big cultural impact, and I don't know how it would settle out. There's no way there wouldn't be a backlash, for instance.
posted by gurple at 8:07 PM on January 16, 2018

CA's "Yes Means Yes" law does indeed relate to students, not the general public. Emphasis added:

(a) In order to receive state funds for student financial assistance, the governing board of each community college district, the Trustees of the California State University, the Regents of the University of California, and the governing boards of independent postsecondary institutions shall adopt a policy concerning sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking, as defined in the federal Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. Sec. 1092(f)) involving a student, both on and off campus. The policy shall include all of the following:

(1) An affirmative consent standard in the determination of whether consent was given by both parties to sexual activity. “Affirmative consent” means affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity. It is the responsibility of each person involved in the sexual activity to ensure that he or she has the affirmative consent of the other or others to engage in the sexual activity. Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent. Affirmative consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time. The existence of a dating relationship between the persons involved, or the fact of past sexual relations between them, should never by itself be assumed to be an indicator of consent.

... followed by more details specifying things like "too drunk to argue is not affirmative consent" and neither is "they were asleep and we'd slept together before, so I thought that would be fine."

So: Not criminal law, but funding-based law. However, a solid investigation into a violation of the yes-means-yes law would support criminal charges as well; the results would be usable as part of the trial evidence.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:21 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

Am curious, desert outpost, are the "number of people I know, people whom I otherwise respect, now saying, 'I dunno...'" women or men?

Representatives of both binary genders, plus a nonbinary person. Older and younger people alike. This is why I'm so troubled. It's not like it's only fifty-year-old men rolling their eyes at Grace.

ErisLordFreedom, thanks for the clarification. I was heading to dinner and didn't have a chance to google.
posted by desert outpost at 8:39 PM on January 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

I am perplexed that there is a question of whether or not this was assaultive.

People like Weinstein and Lauer read like movie villains, so if as a man you're at all capable of self reflection and you know you're not as bad as them, you can view them as not really human, thus disconnected in experience from yourself. This leaves it trivially easy to condemn as it doesn't require uncomfortable self-reflection. In fact outside of maybe Garrison Keillor, where I think we haven't received direct stories from the women involved, every story that has come out has sounded comic book bad, from my perspective as someone who has never experienced rape or abuse.

Whereas here, her description of the sex likely matches in some part sexual experiences experienced by roughly - everyone. Myself included.

So if as a man you "know" you're a good guy and their sexual encounter at all resembles sex that you've had, it has to be categorized as normal and consensual; it was just a bad date, maybe communicate better next time.
posted by MillMan at 8:54 PM on January 16, 2018 [11 favorites]

I've avoided the Ansari story until tonight, because I fully believed Grace just out of the headlines and it's one more awful thing I didn't need to invest time on in 2018. Chalk him up as another dirtbag and move on. But I kept seeing snippets of discussion on Twitter and articles shared and so I made a point of reading up tonight. And yep, it's awful, and yep, it's assault, and even if it isn't legally assault how the hell can anyone want to... argh.

But beyond this, beyond Grace and Ansari, what's really bothering me is how many hottakes are out there eager to tear this one down. Like "Ahah! This is the moment where #MeToo has gone too far!" There's this whole mass of people waiting around for #MeToo to take a wrong turn or overstep like all the critics waiting to declare the superhero movie genre dead so they can say they called it first. There are so many people putting out the "What if #MeToo goes too far?" musings and hypotheticals, and I keep not seeing anything close to too far.

Yes, social movements and revolutions can go bad. It can happen. They can be co-opted for bad ends or turn around to hurt the people they're trying to protect. #MeToo isn't even close to that. It's nowhere in the same neighborhood and hasn't even glanced in that direction. And so the "Oh noes What If It Goes Bad" takes look more and more like they're all just in bad faith.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:31 PM on January 16, 2018 [25 favorites]

I've had dates get withdrawn or go cold on me just in conversation and I realize they're not into it for whatever reason. Any reason at all. I asked if anything is wrong (and listened if they cared to explain), or I called it a night and parted ways, or both. That's just what you do. Even if this is someone you have an established relationship with, it's what you do. Maybe they're tired, maybe they're just not into you, maybe you said something shitty and they don't want to explain it. That's their right.

You ask if things are okay, you apologize if it turns out you did a thing, and you leave (unless they actually ask you to say). And even if they say it's fine but you're not sure they mean that, you still back off because when in doubt, you back off. That's not even "good" behavior. That's like standard. It's expected. It's just what you fucking do.

I can't imagine seeing someone is reluctant and then escalating it to physical contact, let alone everything in Grace's account.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:57 PM on January 16, 2018 [17 favorites]

On the one hand, some people say this is an overreaction - that Ansari's actions are normal, that any suggestion he act otherwise would require him to have psychic powers, and this whole thing is just a subversive ploy to derail the #MeToo movement.

Two points of conspiracy, if we're free to engage in it...

Might have been buried in the lede, but pointed out upthread, babe.net is funded by Rupert Murdoch/Newscorp.

Also, anyone catch the video last week of Harvey Weinstein getting "assaulted" at a restaurant? One of the most powerful men with Mossad levels of security detail was approached, harassed, and slapped by a drunken guy while his friend recorded. This was the most blatant, fake PR stunt to try to win Weinstein some sympathy.

And I feel it's just beginning. There will be blowback. And if you thought Russian collusion during the election was bad, these troll farms just picked up some of the new, most powerful clients. There will be deliberate attempts to derail and gaslight #MeToo. Possibly fraudulent anecdotes or made up tales of "blackmail" and "extortion". Just a caution to remain vigilant for the future.

Am in no way implying this Aziz story is fake, only to draw attention to attempts at manipulation. Let us be on our guard.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 10:00 PM on January 16, 2018 [6 favorites]

Seriously, as a man, it really bothers me that the women I know have a good reason to not want to be alone with me in my home. What if I wanted to invite a friend over to just eat some cake, or just watch TV? But that "just" is impossible, because society gives me carte blanche to turn that "just" into "sex". I don't want women to have to negotiate me like a threat.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:03 PM on January 16, 2018 [17 favorites]

"The vast majority of news sources would not publish a first-person anonymous account without corroboration."

They viewed text conversations she had with her friends immediately after the incident, and the exchange she had with AA himself the next day (and they say they verified his phone number). They also interviewed her friends and roommate about what she said at the time. AA has confirmed that they went on a date and had sexual contact, and confirmed that the next day she had communicated to him her discomfort with the previous night's events.

That's about as much corroboration as you can get without either a video recording/3rd party observer of the actual events or an admission from AA that Grace's description of events is true.

What would count, to you, as corroboration for a story like this?
posted by Secret Sparrow at 10:09 PM on January 16, 2018 [37 favorites]

That's about as much corroboration as you can get without either a video recording/3rd party observer of the actual events or an admission from AA that Grace's description of events is true.

We should also remember: Amber Heard had everything you could want as evidence of Johnny Depp abusing her, and in the public eye it didn't matter. What mattered was she's a woman, she's bi, she's not as big a star, and omg Johnny Depp was so great in those pirate movies how could he be a bad guy? She had video, she had a medical report, she had witnesses from among his own fucking employees, and yet his career is still fine. Totally, nauseatingly fine. It's already forgotten.

If media articles have to hold up to a standard of a criminal conviction to get published, why don't we send all journalists to law school as a prerequisite for the job?
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:21 PM on January 16, 2018 [52 favorites]

Grace’s story and the ensuing debate have reminded me—hauntingly, horrifyingly—of the previously-discussed report that Loretta Young was date-raped by Clark Gable.

Linda recalls telling Young that [date rape] was “basically when you’re with someone that you trust, or literally on a date with them, and you’re not compliant, or you’re saying no, and they’re not listening. And they either can’t hear it or believe the old myth of ‘Oh, you really want that.' I said, ‘It doesn’t have to be violent, it doesn’t have to be rip-your-clothes-off. It’s when your no isn’t no.'”
[...]
According to Funk, Young, like so many from her generation, conceived of her role in “the game of sexes” as “the guy tries to get what she wants; the woman’s job is to fight him off.” The inability to fend off Gable’s advances constituted a failure on her part — not Gable’s. She spent the rest of her life trying to compensate for that failure, believing that the guilt was hers and hers alone.

How far have we really advanced as a society since 1935, how much battleground has feminism actually won, when we’re still framing an inability to fend off a man’s advances as a failure on the woman’s part?
posted by nicebookrack at 10:32 PM on January 16, 2018 [45 favorites]

FirstMateKate and others already said this but I'm saying it again. You say no, he doesn't stop. you say, If you keep going I'll hate you, please don't make me hate you, he doesn't stop. You bargain: I'll fuck you on our second date, just not tonight, he doesn't stop.

now why, after all this and so much more, would a woman give in and let a man do what she didn't want, and said she didn't want? What is wrong with her dumb weak pathetic female psychology that she couldn't just stand up proud and tall and stop his physical assaults on her with a mere word, like a brave good woman would? why, in short, as some have asked, was it her fault? Why was she hitting herself?

well, you participate after all your Nos are ignored because if nothing else will make him stop, ejaculation will make him stop. if you give him what he demands, he will stop grabbing you and holding you down and cornering you, at least long enough for you to leave. that's how you have to think when you're in the middle of being victimized: practically.

and you let him do it, after you said No and he didn't stop, because if you stop saying no right before the very worst of it, which you hope will be the end of it, you can argue that at least you didn't get raped.

obviously if it goes that far, you did. but you can say that. Other people are guaranteed to say it, that nothing that bad happened to you. and that's something. that's the very best you can do for yourself, is create a future in which you can pretend it wasn't quite as bad as it could have been.

that's why. ask again, if you fucking dare. ask why did she again.

a situation in which many men can imagine themselves.
no no no no no. except I read the thread before commenting, so yes.
posted by queenofbithynia at 10:51 PM on January 16, 2018 [50 favorites]

I feel that it's a bit misleading to suggest that consent is easily recognized in all contexts other than sex. People do not always say what they mean, and they do not always mean what they say.

At this point, I want to make clear that I'm talking about consent in general, not sexual consent in specific and certainly not this case in particular.

The "tea" example (asking someone for sex is like asking someone if they like tea) is a good example. If I offer tea, and someone refuses, perhaps they would love tea, but are trying to spare me the trouble. Perhaps I don't want to actually offer tea, but feel that it would be rude if I didn't offer. Perhaps they hate tea, but feel that they would hurt my feelings if they refused. Each end of the spectrum is pretty clear to everyone, but there's quite a lot in the middle that isn't.

From personal experience (and being someone who has a very hard time distinguishing the finer points of both verbal and non-verbal communication people are pretty bad at communicating. Even with my SO, it's extremely frustrating when I feel like something is wrong, and I ask what is wrong and they respond with a "nothing". Sometimes, I'm supposed to take it at face value - just ignore whatever it is that they are keeping under the surface (and before anyone goes off, when I've called off activities based on my attempts at understanding, I've been called to the carpet for not just going ahead based on their verbal response). Other times, I'm supposed to know that "nothing" really means "something" (and typically in this case, it comes up later...). The reverse cases are also quite common.
posted by goddess_eris at 10:53 PM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

The "tea" example (asking someone for sex is like asking someone if they like tea) is a good example. If I offer tea, and someone refuses, perhaps they would love tea, but are trying to spare me the trouble

jesus fuck. you know what actually happens? I say Can I get you a drink? and they say Oh no, I'm fine. I say Are you sure, I have tea and coffee and water, it's no trouble! and they say Oh no, please don't put yourself to any trouble. I say Oh but I'm making coffee for myself anyway, are you sure you don't want a cup, it's no extra bother. They say, oh, thank you, but really, no. I say, OK, but I'm making a full pot, so if you want some later, let me know. They say ok, thanks.

you know what I don't do is POUR A CUP OF COFFEE ON THEM BECAUSE I CAN JUST SENSE THAT THEY REALLY WANT SOME

this analogy is offensive to women, caffeinated beverages, and the human race.

and the essential distinction is that when men like Ansari want sex, they're not offering something, they're asking for something. that makes all the difference. all. men who think of sex as something they can give to women who are intrigued by their ideas and ask to subscribe to their newsletter don't do this. men who think of women as providers or withholders of sex, a female possession, do.

men who think of themselves as gracious hosts who want to offer every amenity to an attractive guest don't force sex on them, any more than they fling scented soaps at them or strangle them with hand towels. the host mindset is not the consumer mindset.
posted by queenofbithynia at 11:00 PM on January 16, 2018 [92 favorites]

> Sometimes, I'm supposed to take it at face value... Other times, I'm supposed to know that "nothing" really means "something"

I hate people that gaslight on their own demand for emotional labor. Sounds like an abusive situation to me. If you say no, but mean yes, then my answer is go away.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:02 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

The v-shaped fingers down the throat in Grace’s account is terribly disturbing. Doing that to someone without asking first is violent, it’s going to choke them. In that situation I would be terrified that I was going to be killed.
posted by andraste at 11:06 PM on January 16, 2018 [19 favorites]

I'm having this grar-y exchange about this on a friend's fb feed with a friend of this friend and she is all "well, tit for tat! she let him go down on her and so yeah, she owes him" and I just....I'm trying to find a non-nuclear way of telling her that she is part of the problem. A huge, huge part of the problem. On the continuum right by "what did she expect, being alone with a man in a private space?"
posted by rtha at 11:09 PM on January 16, 2018 [8 favorites]

I've started telling people that I can no longer discuss various things with them without explicitly and in vivid technicolor envisioning myself frolicking in their steaming viscera and it seems to get my point across pretty well but as always ymmv.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:12 PM on January 16, 2018 [28 favorites]

My husband and I have been discussing all of this since it dropped.

As he shouted while reading the article, "Dude, what the FUCK is with the fingers, bro!!!"

Because we agreed, that's not average-hook-up behavior. To USE someone's mouth as a wetting tool for fingering them and NOT ask... I mean.. come ON! Not everyone likes fingers in their mouth, not everyone likes tasting their own vagina (or penis.) That's so far beyond "most people like this so surely it's okay".

I have been the victim of coercion more times than I can count. My ex pressured me constantly - and I was 17 and he was nearly 21 when we started dating. I told him before he came over one night that I absolutely wasn't ready for sex with him. That I wanted to take it slow. He said,, "Of course, I won't even bring a condom!" That was the first night we had sex. Because he pushed and teased and begged and took my clothes off until I was so confused and blinded by what I thought was "love" that I gave in. He asked me for MONTHS to do [thing] that I wasn't into. It would constantly come up. Until I finally gave in. I thought, maybe if I do [thing] it will make him happy and our relationship will be better. Maybe he will treat me better. Maybe he will love me more. But every time it was painful and uncomfortable. But I pretended to like it to get it over with when I couldn't avoid it any other way. And only a short time later he started saying "Since we do [thing] now, can I do [more intense thing]?" And the whole thing started over again.

I was discussing it with a guy friend. A guy that used to be a best friend. He said "He's going to keep asking you until you say yes, and he wants to do it even more because you said no."

Just casually saying that's how men work. Joking about it even.

That friendship dissolved. He treated women horribly. He got written up for sexual harassment at a job and claimed the woman "couldn't take a joke" while playing the victimized nice guy. He started to get into "negging" in college.

Both of these guys I cared about in a way. Both of them did enough for me that I felt I owed them something, that they MADE me feel I owed them something. Both of them would claim they understood and cared about me. Neither of them did.

So yes, it's completely normal to just freeze or do something to get someone to leave you alone. Just because something isn't illegal doesn't make it right. My friend of 7 years started to make me afraid and uncomfortable so OF COURSE a stranger, a rich celebrity, a larger person, a man can make you scared enough to just keep going until you can leave.

Anyone who wants to advance a situation should ask and get a response before proceeding. Regardless of gender or orientation. Neither my husband or I can fathom being turned on when someone else clearly isn't.
posted by Crystalinne at 11:34 PM on January 16, 2018 [25 favorites]

The first handjob I ever gave, as a teenager, was to a boy who would not stop whining after I said no repeatedly.

He didn't use physical force or verbal intimidation, he didn't lock me in the car or do anything scary, he just... you know how sometimes a small child really really wants, like, a candy bar, and they won't shut up about it? Regardless of how many different ways you phrase "no you cannot have a candy bar?" Then after several minutes of screaming three-year-old you start rationalizing, you know, maybe it'd be fine to let them have this one damn candy bar...

It got to the point where it was just easier to give him the damn handjob, so I did. I had no idea how to handle a penis -- forgot to mention, I openly identified as lesbian at the time (which did almost nothing to deter dudes who wanted sex) -- and I especially had no idea you were supposed to use some kind of lube on the thing. All I knew was when dudes whack it in movies it looks like a combination of taffy pulling & shaking a can of WD-40.

So I can only imagine it was a terrible handjob. I feel a lot of schadenfreude about this, because two decades later I'm still angry my no didn't work. (It took a lot for me to say no; teen me was the kind of people-pleaser who if you mistook her for your cousin Betty would rather pretend to be Betty than correct your mistake, actual example.) And I still feel like I'm not allowed to resent this handjob (and many other shitty sexual encounters) because theoretically I could have gotten out of the car and walked home. Technically this was a handjob I chose to give.

A friend of mine once told me a story about a blowjob she chose to give. The story began with "I opened the door just a crack and he pushed past me" and ended with "So I thought if I blew him maybe that'd be enough to get him to leave." Thankfully, it worked.

tl;dr: I'm really happy we're finally talking about this shit.
posted by taquito sunrise at 12:51 AM on January 17, 2018 [48 favorites]

One deleted. Sorry, I recognize the good intentions, but a long semi-apologia about Ansari's motivation is just going to result in a big angry derail debating the points of theoretical reasoning comprising his imagined mind space. If/when he responds, it will be better just to comment on his actual self representation.
posted by taz (staff) at 1:39 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have had sex when I didn't want to (for medical reasons I often find sex, especially penetrative sex, painful). It has always been with men who, I am fairly certain, if it had come to it, I could have physically fought off. I am sure that they would not want to think of themselves as coercing anyone into having sex; it was not in any way as threatening situation as that which 'Grace' found herself in.

But. They were nice to me. They obviously wanted sex. I didn't want to hurt their feelings (one was very insecure about his sexual performance). If I said 'no' it would have involved a lot of fallout, and the rest of the evening/day would be overshadowed by my refusal. I would have to do a hell of a lot of emotional labour to soothe their feelings, to reassure them that there would be sex in future and everything else. Genuinely, my calculation has always been "it'll be physically painful for like, fifteen minutes max, that's easier to deal with than the consequences of saying no".

I'm not defining that as assault - I did consent to sex in those situations. But I get really pissed off when people are like "why didn't she say no?". Saying no has fucking consequences for women - anything from having to massage a bruised ego for longer than you have time for, to physical violence. It's not just putting others' feelings before our own, as we are taught our whole lives, but that the culture of toxic masculinity means that the expression of male disappointment (at mildest) can be so much larger than our own pain, and something that we are expected to deal with (not them), that being fucked when you don't want it is the less painful option.
posted by Vortisaur at 2:16 AM on January 17, 2018 [35 favorites]

Apologies if I have missed a comment addressing this upthread, but why do people keep saying he had no power over her? Wasn't she in his home? What if his coercive behaviour had become abusive?
I know I would've been scared about saying no or attempting to walk out immediately.
posted by Nieshka at 3:30 AM on January 17, 2018 [5 favorites]

The "tea" example (asking someone for sex is like asking someone if they like tea) is a good example. If I offer tea, and someone refuses, perhaps they would love tea, but are trying to spare me the trouble. Perhaps I don't want to actually offer tea, but feel that it would be rude if I didn't offer. Perhaps they hate tea, but feel that they would hurt my feelings if they refused.

We don’t walk up to people in our kitchens, look soulfully in their eyes, and then bring the cup to their lips, hold the back of their head, and pour tea down their throats.

Is there a chance that asking “want to get naked?” “No.” “Okay well let’s play Yahtzee and call it a night” will produce some ask/guess weird feelings? Yes. I do not promise my sons a lifetime of only happy interactions.

But this is about how to not have coercive sex, right?
posted by warriorqueen at 3:58 AM on January 17, 2018 [19 favorites]

It's not just putting others' feelings before our own, as we are taught our whole lives, but that the culture of toxic masculinity means that the expression of male disappointment (at mildest) can be so much larger than our own pain, and something that we are expected to deal with (not them)

This, very much. When I was 19, I'd been flirting with this guy for a few weeks and it culminated in a group night out where we kissed and something didn't feel quite right, so I backed off. And he kept pushing and I kept keeping away. And I took so much shit for it, not just from him but from the people we were out with, who were hissing at me about how much I'd upset him, how embarrassed I'd made him. And some of those people havent spoken to me since. And I was really into him before that and there was every chance that we might have got into it another time, but no, he just fucking had to have it on demand, didn't he?
posted by threetwentytwo at 4:33 AM on January 17, 2018 [21 favorites]

I think I got misinterpreted a couple times because I was unclear. I didn't mean that tossing a bunch of male entertainers would be such a horrible loss to society.

I meant actually that throwing out a large percentage of male entertainers would have a big cultural impact, and I don't know how it would settle out. There's no way there wouldn't be a backlash, for instance.

My answer still stands - more women will hold positions of power.

Mind you, it wouldn't be because of any kind of revenge fantasy sort of thing. I'm thinking more about the women who were on their way to careers of their own, on a fast-track rise, but then - one bad night and one guy who wouldn't listen to "no" and the trauma she suffers after the fact, and she's now a lot more fearful and a lot more cautious and a lot more troubled and the drive she would have needed to take charge of her own career stalls, and she never gets there. Put real consequences on behavior like Ansari's, and you'll have more guys thinking twice, and less women being thus traumatized, and more women able to charge forward.

And anyway, I think getting the vapors about "mercy how will this our cultural landscape cope with the fallout if these men get ousted" instead of "holy crap how many other women are being hurt this way" is really pretty damn shitty, no matter how well-intentioned you may think you're being.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:39 AM on January 17, 2018 [24 favorites]

Why is no one pointing out that Anzari repeatedly LIED to her that he was going to stop and then went back on what he said?!

She had the utter gall and temerity to take a grown man at his word. What a crime.
posted by jfwlucy at 4:45 AM on January 17, 2018 [32 favorites]

One reason these “it’s just BAD SEX, can’t you delicate girls deal with BAD SEX” rationalizations sound so ridiculous to me: they assume women somehow can’t tell the difference between bad sex and *degrading* sex.

Presumably this is because because they are stupid/naive/weak, or another heavily-gendered adjective we like to throw at inconvenient women.

Women can goddamn tell the difference. Men can tell the difference too, I bet.
posted by faineg at 5:05 AM on January 17, 2018 [12 favorites]

I think in the interested of a teachable moment, let's go over what could of happened. If your partner seems uncomfortable or wants to "wait" you assume not only that you will back off but that then, you will likely be done for the evening unless they tell you otherwise. That's it. If you're struggling with blue balls or to be a good friend while horny, you absolutely can say, "Wow I've gotten a little worked up, would it be ok if we call it a night and maybe talk about what things we like and don't like at a later time?"

I think a lot of times men don't want to just let women make the moves because well, quite likely it means they won't have sex as soon or as often. Which is... ok? I mean if women tend to have a different pace ESPECIALLY at initial encounters and get to know each other phase, can that be ok? If the assumption is that there should be a compromise between the average man and average women's urges to jump into sex right away this means essentially you are saying that in the interests of "fairness" women need to be having a lot of unwanted sex.

Which is gross and creepy. Maybe it should be ok for some aspects of dating to suck for men at times and not fix it by saying women have a social duty to provide their bodies to fix this situation for men? It's just an idea.
posted by xarnop at 5:28 AM on January 17, 2018 [19 favorites]

A friend of mine wrote a (analogue/larp/rpg) game called The Grey Zone about this kind of situation as part of the #feminism anothology of nanogames.

That's how I see it. I don't think it's necessarily helpful to argue the points on whether this was black and white sexual assault. I do feel it sits in some kind of grey zone. But what is important and clear is that the woman left this encounter feeling awful. That is obviously and clearly not good.

I definitely agree with Anna North's article that the commonality of this situation is what makes it interesting. For the vast majority of men the harm that can and will do isn't like the cliche of "stranger danger" rape. But something more disturbingly subtle like this. I think it's difficult, but important as a man, to be aware of your own power to be monstrous.
posted by Erberus at 5:29 AM on January 17, 2018 [4 favorites]

A few deleted. As LobsterMitten said, people should "refrain from trolling or bullshit or 'just asking questions' or other weird contrarianism in here. Consider this a warning."
posted by taz (staff) at 5:41 AM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]

So I was once a 20-year-old non-famous woman with a similarly famous, well-liked, "woke bae" kind of guy in his mid-30s. Definitely the kind of guy other guys would point to as "one of the good ones," and still do. Certainly someone who called himself a feminist, and still does. Above and beyond the baked-in power imbalance, I felt an overwhelming amount of pressure to want to be liked by him. He had a lot of social and professional clout; I admired his creative output, and didn't yet know that prestigious men will often choose to extract a toll from young women who look up to them.

To that end, I started with a plain and literal no, which only served to kickstart the negotiation process. (Why not? Eh, I don't really want to. But why?) Then I started down the road of gentle excuses. (I'm tired, it was such a long day, there are other people around, I don't feel comfortable with this.) Then I started moving away. But then he started matching every step back with a step forward, and then he started taking my clothes off, so in the end, I just went silent and hoped he would use my body efficiently enough to make it fast. I switched from subject to object to preserve the illusion that I had a choice in the matter. I couldn't bear to fight him off, not because he was more than twice my size but because I was enamored of him. I admired him so much, and I didn't want him to be disappointed in me.

That was the overarching sentiment of the moment - not the fact that someone was about to do something to me that I had already pointedly told them not to do, but that if I didn't give in, he wouldn't like me anymore, and it was really important to me for him to like me. It was also really important for me to be able to preserve the idea of him I had in my mind, as a "good guy" and ally, and for him to be able to preserve that idea of himself as well. I am certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would consider the experience unequivocally consensual, and for a long time, that actually made me feel relieved. So it's been really weird to observe that a lot of people seem unable to imagine that sometimes a woman's rejection of a man does not culminate in the most cut-and-dried ways (scream! kick him in the dick! run away!) because she still wants to like the guy. Grace even said it out loud: "Don't make me hate you." And Dworkin: "Have you ever wondered why we [women] are not just in armed combat against you? It's not because there's a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence."

The world makes it very clear to young women that our feelings don't matter and our rejections are likely to go unheard out of hand, so at 20, I understood my energies would be best spent elsewhere. For years, I straight-up joked with my friends about just how hard I had tried to avoid the encounter. Now it's just an uncomfortable reminder that I once respected a shitty man's stupid career more than the inviolability of my body. But hey, at least I can take comfort in the knowledge that what he did wasn't technically illegal!

Rape culture is a contract we never actually signed.
posted by obstinate harpy at 5:42 AM on January 17, 2018 [68 favorites]

She did nothing wrong. Aziz is human jalapeno diarrhea for this, and a massive hypocrite to boot, and should no longer have a career. What he did is inexcusable and completely common. Assume all men are terrible until proven otherwise, and even then keep your head on a swivel. No more sacred cows. Even Gandhi was a monster. These are my thoughts. I'm a survivor too so I can't spend too much time in these threads but just wanted to nth what FirstMateKate and queenofbithynia and many more have already said much more directly and clearly.
posted by lazaruslong at 6:03 AM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]

I have reservations about "enthusiastic consent." I feel as if, having shouted my defiance at the laws of gravity and jumped off cliffs and high dives into deep water in my youth, I'm expected to do so on routine 20 years later. Age and prior lovers have not been kind to me. Pejoratively, I'm "drama:" triggers, dysphoria, bad joints, bad skin, a growing army of doctors, and a container of medication. Good sex for me these days would involve a buddy to cautiously explore the shallows with and find my own comfortable depth. That's likely to involve a lot of dog-paddling, flailing, and moments of frustration to work through.

From experience, some people just shift their game from feigned compliance to feigned enthusiasm. I'd say that the standard should be mutual communication and care, but I've been burned by people manipulating that ethos as well.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 6:13 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

I have a question for any woman here willing to help a man understand relationship dynamics. I hope it's not a derail.

Specifically I'm asking about the scenario where women say "I was getting involved with a really cool guy but then he started to try to undermine my consent." In your experience is the man mostly interested in orgasming or is it a power thing?

I know that is a false dichotomy but it's really the only way I could think of framing the question. I guess what I'm trying to ask is do you think this terrible behavior is more anatomical or psychological?

Feel free to correct any of my assumptions I'm just trying to listen and learn.
posted by laptolain at 6:22 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

I guess what I'm trying to ask is do you think this terrible behavior is more anatomical or psychological?

Feel free to correct any of my assumptions

I think you assume most men see women as full people. Actual human beings, equal to a man, whose pain and suffering matter.

They just don’t see us as people. On a bone deep, fundamental, visceral level, even when their brains tell themselves they’re one of the good guys, and they believe all the right things, and vote the right way, they still do not react to our pain the way you react to the pain of another human. We are not worthy of empathy, because we are lesser, and we owe men sex. That is how someone like Aziz Ansari can coerce and assault a woman who keeps saying no, that she doesn’t like this, that she’s uncomfortable, and somehow walk away thinking it was “fun.”

It is a fundamental, visceral inability to see our humanity.

I don’t know if they’ve replicated those studies they did on white people not reacting to black people’s pain along gender lines, but...they fucking should.
posted by schadenfrau at 6:33 AM on January 17, 2018 [49 favorites]

What he did is inexcusable and completely common.

This bears repeating, forever and ever.
posted by schadenfrau at 6:35 AM on January 17, 2018 [12 favorites]

If Ansari had been purposefully direct in his communication (I’d like to kiss you; my I kiss you? I’d like to touch you here; may I touch you here? Do you like that?) the burden wouldn’t have been on Grace to ensure her intent was clear. And, in my experience, whatever sexual activity occurred would have been a lot more fun for everyone involved.

Every time talking about consent comes up, one of the strong reactions is always "ew, that's not sexy at all." But even if directly asking isn't sexy, it is still a million times sexier than the gross encounter described in the article.

I would bet a lot that he has many years of experience pushing these boundaries to get sex, and it probably works more often than it doesn't. At an absolute minimum, with it all laid out in black and white I hope that he can see how demeaning and unworthy the encounter was, and completely unnecessarily so -- all it would have taken was listening to the first "no" and diverting the evening to something more fun for both people.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:43 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have reservations about "enthusiastic consent." I feel as if, having shouted my defiance at the laws of gravity and jumped off cliffs and high dives into deep water in my youth, I'm expected to do so on routine 20 years later

I see your point about the use of the word "enthusiastic." According to the XOJane article in the FPP (What's So Confusing About Enthusiastic Consent?) the actual phrase used in the California bill is "affirmative consent", which to me sounds better as it kind of removes any expectations of being in a specific emotional state.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:45 AM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]

Specifically I'm asking about the scenario where women say "I was getting involved with a really cool guy but then he started to try to undermine my consent." In your experience is the man mostly interested in orgasming or is it a power thing?

Consciously, I think it's the man just wanting to get off; meaning, the man's thought process is not "I shall exercise my power and command over this mere woman because LO I AM MAN." The man's thought process is basically "MUST. COME. NOW", or is a lizard-brain urge.

But there is a power dynamic in that, that the man has been rasied in; some men are raised such that unconsciously they feel that their power is such that their lizard brain impulse or their "MUST COME NOW" mental monologue is reason enough to compell another human to satisfy that urge.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:52 AM on January 17, 2018 [4 favorites]

Slightly off topic but relevant hot take over here:

the tragedy of this story is how awfully common it is and the likelihood that it has happened to someone you know and care about is astronomical. If you are a dude looking to discuss this topic, think twice before asking a female friend of yours to hash it out. This subject matter can force a person to re-traumatize themselves by bringing to the surface feelings that they haven't felt or thought about for a long time. Even if your intention is good, ("I am sorry this happened to you!" "How can I discuss this with my male friends?" "men are terrible huh?" ect.) it can totally derail someone's entire day. Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is to do the work yourself.
posted by teamKRL at 6:52 AM on January 17, 2018 [26 favorites]

Yeah, enthusiastic consent can just mean saying, "I like that."
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:54 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

Good sex for me these days would involve a buddy to cautiously explore the shallows with and find my own comfortable depth. That's likely to involve a lot of dog-paddling, flailing, and moments of frustration to work through.

Assuming I'm reading you right it breaks my heart that that is something that seems so far out of reach as to not even be worth looking for.
posted by PMdixon at 6:56 AM on January 17, 2018 [6 favorites]

In your experience is the man mostly interested in orgasming or is it a power thing?

Men have ways to orgasm without involving another person, you know. It's pretty gross (and offensive to people who aren't pushy jerks yet still have normal sex drives) to imply that being pushy about sex is due to "anatomical" reasons. Men, like women, have big old brains they can use to keep their animal instincts in check. When's the last time you stole food off a stranger's plate in a restaurant because you were so hungry you couldn't wait? Hunger is a far more essential need than sex, and people can generally manage to act civilized even when quite hungry.
posted by randomnity at 7:05 AM on January 17, 2018 [25 favorites]

I guess what I'm trying to ask is do you think this terrible behavior is more anatomical or psychological?

I am having such a strong reaction to this right now, so forgive me. But - anatomical??? Like, the penis thinks for itself here? It's also not psychological.

This is a problem of ethics and morality. This is men deciding that their pleasure is more important than anything else in the room. Put it this way: A guy is having sex in a hotel room on a business trip. His boss knocks at the door and calls through that he has an important assignment that comes with a $10k bonus.

Are we prepared to say that men would not be able to pause and tell the boss that they will do it? Throw on some pants?

Well then, guess what? Making sure your partner is feeling okay is the same thing, and it should be worth more than $10k to you to be sure you do not leave a human being shivering, violated, and having flashbacks. Right?
posted by warriorqueen at 7:29 AM on January 17, 2018 [37 favorites]

I see your point about the use of the word "enthusiastic." According to the XOJane article in the FPP (What's So Confusing About Enthusiastic Consent?) the actual phrase used in the California bill is "affirmative consent", which to me sounds better as it kind of removes any expectations of being in a specific emotional state.

Good point. I like affirmative consent better, largely because I think "enthusiastic" ties into the pop-culture image of the idealized sexual partner who's GGG for penetrative and oral intercourse and open for negotiation about just about everything else. It creates an environment where people are encouraged to question and push our own limits because it might be fun if we give it a try.

On the other thread: I honestly don't think physical orgasm is a big part of it. Drive-by groping is just plain bullying. It's a way to cause harm in a way that won't be reported or leave physical marks. In other cases, I think the "seduction" myth plays a big part. The attacker is forcing the other person to roleplay a fantasy where reluctant arousal becomes enthusiastic participation at some point. (I suspect that's the script Ansari is roleplaying here.) Oh, and then there's the "make-up sex" script. You fuck after fighting because that's what you're supposed to do to reset the relationship. That's just three different scripts I've seen going on.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 7:37 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

A workshop I was in yesterday mentioned a really amazing way to think about consent as not just "I want this", but also making sure you're not thinking "I can live with this".
posted by A hidden well at 8:00 AM on January 17, 2018 [19 favorites]

Good sex for me these days would involve a buddy to cautiously explore the shallows with and find my own comfortable depth. That's likely to involve a lot of dog-paddling, flailing, and moments of frustration to work through.

I can see your point about the word enthusiastic, and I like affirmative as an alternative.

That said, I have focused on my kids in this discussion but I have been further down the road of consent issues inside a loving relationship than most people, because I have abuse-generated PTSD from my childhood and also am multiple. So my husband and I had unusual work to do about an understanding of what consent means when the person-in-the-body-in-front-of-you may or may not be being retraumatized or have chosen to be there.

I have to tell you that...my husband is for sure pretty amazing so kudos to him but he did not actually find it that hard to slow down a bit, check on my/our body language, ask me/us directly "are you enjoying this?" And on my/our end, yes, after a lifetime(s) of having to absolutely ignore our own autonomy and feelings to survive brutal sex, it took some work to get to where our yeses and our nos were gold.

But just some, because both my husband and we shared the same goal, which was a partnership in bed as well as out of it, which means everyone is better than surviving, and having a good time. I have a deep understanding of the complex work it takes but I have to say that the steps were not that hard themselves, once we all got that sex is two people communicating in a pleasurable way and not a chess match. My husband came with that pre-loaded and I had to learn it.

It goes like this:
Person A asks Person B if they want to do a thing. Person A waits for answer.
Person B takes a breath, checks in with self and body. Feelings of panic but want to go ahead? "I feel a bit panicky but I'd like to go ahead." Feelings of yes? "Yes, that would be nice." Feelings of no? "No, not right now."
Person A listens to response, checks in with self about response, proceeds following yes/no directive. "If you're panicking I'd rather not today because we have to be somewhere at 1" or "okay, keep in touch about the panic," etc. etc.
Rinse and repeat.
If things go wrong, take 5 minutes, come back and discuss.
Assume that honest communication is success. Not having sex on Sunday = no big deal. Long-term goal is a permanently good sex life.

At 23 years of marriage, our sex life is really good. We still check in but we do actually now have all the non-verbal communication down and it is generally super smooth and easy. If only our kids were out of the house more. :) All the flailing, as it turns out, is a good base.

And look, neither my husband nor I grew up in a bubble, we watched all the shitty movies and read the bad SF and had the same conversations with friends and family that people do. We did this in the late 90s/early 00s where there was a lot of information but I would say the discourse around rape culture was more attuned to quote-unquote rape-rape and not consent in a loving relationship.

So...please take heart, it is entirely possible to do.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:12 AM on January 17, 2018 [19 favorites]

This is not an attack on you specifically, laptoplain, but: The more excuses I hear about men's "biology" the more I think back to Matthew 18: 8-9.

If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.

Like, if I was a man who literally believed that my biology caused a compulsion to harm women so great that I couldn't ignore it, I wouldn't say "that's just nature." I'd do my best to never be in a situation where I was tempted; I would never be alone with a woman. I would seek help, and if that wasn't enough - I would seek medical solutions.

Suggesting that men do that would probably sound crazy and radical. But that's only because society is nowhere near condemning this kind of behavior. Compare what I just said to what you would expect of someone with a different, but less socially acceptable, compulsion that harms others.

But warriorqueen is 100% right that this isn't about "biology"; it's about patriarchy. Men are perfectly capable of treating women as equal human beings, but they just don't want to because it would mean giving something up.

And I believe this is where a lot of so-called "feminist" men fail. It's easy to say that you believe men and women should be--and are--equal. In fact, in the right circles you have a strong incentive to do so, because you can congratulate yourself for being one of the "good" ones. But once you actually have to give something up--whether it's sex, money, free time, power--then it costs. Then the ideals you profess come into conflict with what you want in the moment, and you reveal your selfish and entitled character.

And then the self-justification begins:

I make more money than her because I'm better at my job, or because of factors outside of my control. She isn't right about my friend Bob; she must be misinterpreting what he said. Women are just better multitaskers - and look at me saying that women are better! Her standards for keeping the house clean are unreasonable. It was just a harmless joke. Women who don't put out on the first date are just victims of slut-shaming culture.

She didn't say "no."

She said "no," but I didn't understand her.

She said "no," but she wanted to be seduced - it wasn't a real no.

She said "no," but it's not rape if she eventually says yes, so it's okay.

...
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:12 AM on January 17, 2018 [21 favorites]

A few deleted; please think about whether your comment is going to instantly become a super obvious screaming derail, and consider holding that thought for another time and place.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:16 AM on January 17, 2018 [4 favorites]

Specifically I'm asking about the scenario where women say "I was getting involved with a really cool guy but then he started to try to undermine my consent." In your experience is the man mostly interested in orgasming or is it a power thing?

Power thing. Or they would seek out women who are willing and enthusiastic; we exist; there is no shortage of women who actively like and want sex, and not all of us are ugly or fat. But the claim is that women who are "too eager" are "sluts," and a "nice guy" doesn't seek out "sluts." They want a nice girl! Maybe not a virgin, but one who is selective about her partners! --as if "likes partners with whom I can enjoy sex" is not a reasonable criterion. They want a woman who "makes them feel special," and if they believe any guy could "get" her, how special could they feel?

In short: they want conquest. They want to overcome a woman's reservations. They want to have sex on a first date with a woman who doesn't normally "put out" until the third date. (They often don't want three dates; a woman could become annoyed with any aspect of his personality in that time, and then he's "lost his investment" of time and date money.) They want to believe that they are so virile, so impressive, that they alone could provide a woman with the amazing gift of their rampant masculinity.

If they just wanted to get off, they have their own hand and lotion for that. Sure, it can get monotonous, but it's a more pleasant physical experience than sex with someone who is flinching or freezing and may be prone to awkward movements at the wrong time. (Elbow in the eye; knee to the side of the groin...) It's just not as emotionally fulfilling for the guy - he doesn't want an orgasm; he wants a victory!
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:27 AM on January 17, 2018 [14 favorites]

Boomers, Xers, and Millennials were mostly socialized to believe that sex before marriage was shameful and taboo.

From way up thread, but WHAT? I came of age in the 70s and believe me, sex was everywhere. No one I knew believed that sex before marriage was shameful. It was absolutely understood that two people would not get married until you knew you were sexually compatible. This is not the first time I've seen something like this on metafilter.

I'm in a Super Sekrit Facebook group that is women of a certain age who mostly had wild pasts (friends of friends from the 90s). We've been having a discussion about the Aziz Ansari article for days, and it's really interesting to me that they are coming from a place of having experienced dates like this, many having experienced sexual assaults and rape, and having sons and daughters now in their 20s. The original article is so oddly written that it really did get a lot of these women (myself included) irritated at the fact even though Aziz's behavior is absolutely disgusting, 'Grace' appears to have no agency, and the details are so salacious one woman said it read like revenge porn. Intelligent people are reading the article and coming to different conclusions.

When I was first dating at college, I really wanted sex! I actually assumed that guys knew more than I did, and I wanted to learn. I wanted to be out and mixing it up, but I came to realize it didn't actually feel so good to just do anything with anyone, and people get hurt, men and women both, if we don't use our words and listen to each other. Mostly I think men learned this lesson as well.

I think the overall conversation about consent is incredibly important and I'm so glad we're having it, but I hope it continues and isn't bound by that one stupid article.
posted by maggiemaggie at 8:41 AM on January 17, 2018 [16 favorites]

Just to add to the excellent comment above: if you want conquest you are in fact an invader, barbarian, conquering soldier raping the villagers, petty tyrant.

This is what we need to kindly teach our kids, the way we teach them to stay off neighbours’ lawns and not open other people’s presents.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:42 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

I just want to clarify that the reason I asked about the separation of biological (orgasm) and psychological (power) sexual assault is because I was skeptical of that reasoning after having encountered it elsewhere on the internet.

Everything said in response to my comment I wholeheartedly agree with. I am strongly in support of the fact that it's an issue of ethics and morality. I simply wanted to know from the perspective of women if they found some type of delineation between "the cool guy" and "the lizard brain" of sexuality. The answer to my question seems to be a resounding no.
posted by laptolain at 8:48 AM on January 17, 2018

FirstMateKate: "Let me make this perfectly clear: these men know what they are doing. This is not an accident, this is malicious disregard of my and women's wishes in order to be sexually satisfied. I did what every single mefite warns against - I contacted him later down the line and demanded an explanation. And you know what? He gave it to me. I got it, in writing, that he knew I was giving signals, he knew I didn't really want to, and he continued anyway because eventually i'd give in. Men rely on this to abuse and exploit women without getting caught. It's absolutely foul. it took me a long time (and I'm still working on it) to recognize what happened to me as rape. It's the worst thin that's ever happened. I got pregnant that night, and I'm still in debt because of having to pay for the abortion out of pocket. All men* benefit from womn's collective fear of saying no."

poffin boffin: "why aren't the women saying no saying no in the way that I want them to say it"

FirstMateKate: She did her part. She said no. She said she was uncomfortable, she physically changed her behavior. What you're doing is not asking women to take part in the responsibility, you're asking women to take on more responsibility so that men can keep on - being creeps and coercing women, without having to be adults and look at the consequences of their actions. Women are always are expected to cater to men's behavior and pick up the slack, instead of men admitting they have faults.

AFABulous: "re: teaching kids about consent. I agree with the comment above that boys and men already grasp the concept of consent. I was in an emotionally abusive marriage and I finally got that it was abusive when my therapist said "does he talk to his boss the way he talks to you? no? Then he has control over his actions." Boys understand that they're not supposed to take the toy away from another boy, even if they do it anyway. Men understand consent just fine. Some just don't think that women are people. That's the real problem."

To be clear, despite the stereotype, experimental evidence demonstrates this, that men have no trouble understanding the negative signals women women provide about unwanted sexual advances. It really is just that men like Ansari pretend to not understand. He knew exactly what he was doing, and what he was doing in light of their clearly shared understanding of her lack of consent was pretty clearly sexual assault. As always, if you would like a copy of this paper to help you contribute to this academic discussion we are having, please feel free to send me a me-mail message with an email address I can send a PDF to as well as a promise not to distribute the PDF further.

Just Say No? The Use of Conversation Analysis In Developing A Feminist Perspective On Sexual Refusal.
This article aims to show the value of conversation analysis for feminist theory and practice around refusal skills training and date rape prevention. Conversation analysis shows that refusals are complex conversational interactions, incorporating delays, prefaces, palliatives, and accounts. Refusal skills training often ignores and overrides these with its simplistic prescription to `just say no'. It should not in fact be necessary for a woman to say `no' in order for her to be understood as refusing sex. We draw on our own data to suggest that young women are able explicitly to articulate a sophisticated awareness of these culturally normative ways of indicating refusal, and we suggest that insistence upon `just say no' may be counterproductive insofar as it implies that other ways of doing refusals (e.g. with silences, compliments, or even weak acceptances) are open to reasonable doubt. Finally we discuss the implications of our use of conversation analysis for feminist psychology, both in relation to date rape and more generally.

They conclude based on a pretty profoundly strong argument that: "Drawing on the conversation analytic literature, and on our own data, we claim that both men and women have a sophisticated ability to convey and to comprehend refusals, including refusals which do not include the word ‘no’, and we suggest that male claims not to have ‘understood’ refusals which conform to culturally normative patterns can only be heard as self-interested justifications for coercive behaviour." There is no need for any of this handwringing about how Grace may or may not have been able to communicate better, she was in fact communicating just fine, and Ansari was no doubt understanding her loud and clear. There really is absolutely no need for anyone to lecture women about how they can communicate more clearly, and only a need to teach men that indirect 'no's related to sex aren't just as real and important as other 'no's they already understand just fine, but much more fucking important.
posted by Blasdelb at 8:50 AM on January 17, 2018 [27 favorites]

Dip Flash: To make only a minor contribution to the discussion (and hopefully not an inflammatory one), I have first-hand experience of asking for consent explicitly. I do it every time, before, during, and after. When I've done it, I've been told it is, "gross", "unsmooth", "awkward", etc. There are frequently perplexed frowns and grimaces.

As someone who falls on the spectrum, I have disengaged from potential sexual encounters for doubting consent. I don't trust consent even when it is given verbally. I mistrust my own ability to judge cues, and I am aware that I cannot know for sure that someone providing verbal consent isn't looking to avoid "letting me down" for fear of violence or other retribution.

What tends to unfortunately follow, whether it is asking for consent or turning someone down out of fear that consent is not genuine, is that I get called "weak" or variations on "effeminate"; "anxious", "sensitive". Never are these comments meant as compliments by the tone. Often they are said behind my back. The response is always in reinforcement of toxic masculinity. Maybe this is a symptom of the youth of myself and the people I hang around, but I find it extremely confusing and difficult to navigate.
posted by constantinescharity at 8:53 AM on January 17, 2018 [13 favorites]

you know what I don't do is POUR A CUP OF COFFEE ON THEM BECAUSE I CAN JUST SENSE THAT THEY REALLY WANT SOME

I did say that the extremes are obvious. There are less extreme versions of this. Have you ever served food or drink to someone even though they said no thanks? Have you ever gone hungry because you didn’t want to be rude?

I’m just saying that (at least for some people (and by people I mean me)) consent isn’t as straightforward and clear cut as it is often presented.
posted by goddess_eris at 9:06 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

>I hate people that gaslight on their own demand for emotional labor. Sounds like an abusive situation to me. If you say no, but mean yes, then my answer is go away

Maybe I’m just astoundingly bad at interpreting other people’s communication but the world seems much more complex than that. This isn’t gaslighting, this is just people being, well, people. It sure it would be easier if everyone always said exactly what they meant and meant what they say. If you and yours live life that way I’m very very jealous - interacting with people is a bit like a minefield for me - even if nothing goes wrong it’s stressful.

I often find it’s easier to simply never be in a position where the rules are unclear - I deliberately avoid being alone with someone of the other gender under all circumstances.
posted by goddess_eris at 9:16 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

women of a certain age

So they didn’t encounter men educated primarily by porn and Reddit, then
posted by schadenfrau at 9:26 AM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]

So they didn’t encounter men educated primarily by porn and Reddit, then

And yet they all had dates like the one Grace had with Aziz, and anyway, the point of mentioning their age was to point out that boomers and gen-xers were not actually raised to be sex-negative prudes, as was suggested upthread.
posted by palomar at 9:32 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

When I was first dating at college, I really wanted sex!

I just . . . don't know why we would assume that Grace doesn't want sex? She doesn't want sex with Aziz ten minutes into a hook-up! It seems to me like she likes him a lot, which complicates their power dynamic. She wants to slow down and get to know him better, but that doesn't mean that, at the outset, she's disinterested in him. Just upset by how quickly and aggressively things proceed with him.

One of the things that freaks me out the most about the way discussions about this have gone down is the number of people I've seen say that, because she goes back to his apartment, because she lets him perform oral sex on her, because she lets him take her clothes off, then therefore she is consenting to do anything with him that he wants to do.

I don't know. It's really upsetting.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:33 AM on January 17, 2018 [33 favorites]

When I've done it, I've been told it is, "gross", "unsmooth", "awkward", etc. There are frequently perplexed frowns and grimaces.

I want to have faith in humanity here and say this is an age thing where someone Young thinks there is some ideal experience where everyone magically knows what to do, and that more experience of how great it is when people ask and really connect will help. All I can be sure of though is that both my husband and I find asking each other things in bed really sexy.

I did say that the extremes are obvious. There are less extreme versions of this. Have you ever served food or drink to someone even though they said no thanks? Have you ever gone hungry because you didn’t want to be rude?

I’m just saying that (at least for some people (and by people I mean me)) consent isn’t as straightforward and clear cut as it is often presented.

It is for me, now. I now have a very clear idea about what I want to do and don't want to do, and I can communicate that. I mean, your lived experience is valid but can we talk about the assumptions here?

So - absolutely, no. I don't serve someone food if they say no thanks. If they are sitting there upset that I didn't push them, then they can tell me, or be clearer next time. Sometimes this has gone horribly wrong with people from other cultures, so now sometimes with a mom I don't know or a new friend I'll say "In my family, we take a no as a definite no, so please do say yes if you would like some."

And I think going hungry is actually a decent analogy - yes, I have gone hungry because someone wasn't offering me food or I sensed I didn't want to pay the emotional price of it, or I thought it might be rude. And that is okay; no one is required to provide me with food (or sex) and I can choose to override biological urges in the name of social harmony which is what, essentially, we are asking everyone to do which is slow the fuck down about sex so that no one gets harmed. Harmed. Be a little hungry in the name of not violating someone. Go home and eat/self-pleasure.

As I said, I've said with a lot of personal variations on this in unusual ways and spent therapy $$ working through it. So if anyone wants to talk through particular examples, I'm game (here or via MeMail.)
posted by warriorqueen at 9:35 AM on January 17, 2018 [11 favorites]

I have first-hand experience of asking for consent explicitly. I do it every time, before, during, and after. When I've done it, I've been told it is, "gross", "unsmooth", "awkward", etc. There are frequently perplexed frowns and grimaces.

After you've gotten initial consent, there's usually room to skip specifically asking after that. Instead, have occasional pauses that allow the other person time to react - drawing a hand down their side, stopping to look before moving slowly in for a kiss, and so on. That gives them a chance to move away if they want, or grab you and pull you closer, rather than having to get out of their happyspace and think in words about what their body is feeling.

For potential research on how to weave consent negotiations into sex, there's over 1500 fanfics tagged as Explicit Consent on AO3. (Disclaimer: they're tagged by the authors, and not everyone agrees on what that means.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:35 AM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]

When I was first dating at college, I really wanted sex!

I just . . . don't know why we would assume that Grace doesn't want sex?

All I meant by my comment was that I really wanted sex, it was not about Grace. I would not want sex with Ansari ten minutes into a date. I thought he was way out of line.
posted by maggiemaggie at 9:38 AM on January 17, 2018

It's true that consent isn't always easy to judge nonverbally and that some people find verbal communication awkward (though this does not need to be anywhere near "do you want to have sex with me now", which I agree is very awkward. It can be something much more natural like how does that feel, do you like that, or even nonverbal stuff like escalating slowly while watching for things like tensing or moving away slightly, or waiting for them to make at least some initiating moves instead of just not protesting as you escalate each time).

On the other hand, if you're not sure how your partner feels, would you rather err on the side of being awkward and maybe missing out on a night of sex, or on the side of being a huge jerk and maybe traumatizing someone?

Unfortunately I know first-hand what the answer is for a lot of guys. And that needs to change.
posted by randomnity at 9:40 AM on January 17, 2018 [4 favorites]

Be a little hungry in the name of not violating someone. Go home and eat/self-pleasure.

Honestly, it's happened enough times that these days I just think it's less trouble to eat beforehand.
posted by FJT at 9:50 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you say no, but mean yes, then my answer is go away

So here's the radical thing: sex is a matrix, not a light switch with YES/NO settings, and actually encompasses a bunch more than just putting a penis in a vagina. In fact, sometimes it doesn't even involve that AT ALL even if one person has the one and the other person has the other!

On top of that, everybody has stuff that they don't ever want to do, don't want to do with a relative stranger, prefer to do with relative strangers, do/don't feel like doing today.

And then! In the moment, those parameters may change depending on interpersonal and environmental factors. Some people need an acclimatization period, a ramp-up of intimacy, and time to become physically aroused to a truly ready state. Sometimes people get an unexpected vibe (or realization of drunkenness, or new concerns about what they ate for dinner sitting quietly, or someone's apartment/roommate/neighborhood is worrisome etc etc etc) in the moment. Or you get back to his and instead of getting any ramp-up or foreplay, he's like okay right now we fuck and you're like no, that's not going to work for me and never was going to work for me, now I'm realizing you're a shithead and I'm in a difficult situation.

So yes, there is One Overarching No, and that No is: go away, leave me alone, I am not going to a second location with you, I am not interested in you.

That's not the same no as when you go home/to some kind of sex-feasible place with someone, where a whole bunch of new options come online. So someone can go home with you and decide no, penetrative sex is not on the table tonight, but yes, manual and/or oral is. Or no, you can't tie me to your dining room table but yes I will tie you to it. Or yes, I will indeed play Angry Chemistry Teacher with you but no, I will not actually check your homework, I never even took algebra and it's very late (wait did you bring me home just to do your homework for you because I'm getting an uber now, jfc.)

And even if people did adopt the much more productive strategy of having a 5-minute conversation at the party/on the app's chat function/at the beginning of the date working out yes to these things and no to those and here's some maybes; I'm allergic to shellfish so please tell me if your roommate is a lobster, I need to be home before 7am one party still might get down to it and be like I'm not feeling X thing we discussed and THE OTHER PARTY SHOULD CARE ABOUT THAT and be all oh well what sounds good for Plan B and not YOU PROMISED ME YOU SAID SO NOW YOU HAVE TO LET ME DO IT.

Being considerate and compassionate and interested in other people's needs is not an unreasonable demand. There's just an entire culture of unreasonable people who'd literally rather fuck someone who actively loathes and fears them in that moment than be kind and collaborative.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:52 AM on January 17, 2018 [21 favorites]

the Inimitable Lindy West in the New York Times
posted by Dressed to Kill at 9:54 AM on January 17, 2018 [15 favorites]

Have you ever served food or drink to someone even though they said no thanks?

A. no, how bizarre. I might leave the plate or the pitcher out on the counter so that they can take something if they decide they want it, but of course I have never force-fed anyone. What a question.

B. As I tried to say earlier, this is deeply dishonest even if unintentionally so, because this is even not about giving an unwelcome offer, but about asking for and taking something that you want. Men who assault women this way do not think of their own bodies as the desirable thing they are offering to someone else.

If you want a food analogy, an accurate one is: you come over and demand that I make you dinner. I say no, and because I am socialized to be polite about it, I offer the excuse that I don't really have enough on hand to prepare something. you shove me aside and start rifling through my kitchen cabinets to prove me wrong. once you find what you want, you eat it. You say "thanks" afterwards, because that proves it was consensual.

seriously, this continues to be offensive.
posted by queenofbithynia at 9:55 AM on January 17, 2018 [39 favorites]

I have a question for any woman here willing to help a man understand...

In your experience is the man mostly interested in orgasming or is it a power thing?

...do you think this terrible behavior is more anatomical or psychological?

How the F should we know?

Just as much as women shouldn't be responsible for making sure men never have hurt feelings or disappointment or poor self-esteem, we can't be expected to be experts on where their deeper motivation comes from.

It could be as simple as the fact that they know they can, so why bother trying not to do whatever strikes their fancy.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:57 AM on January 17, 2018 [16 favorites]

I have a question for any woman here willing to help a man understand...
In your experience is the man --------

And at this point, you realize you are asking the wrong question to the wrong people and you go ask a man.
posted by Sophie1 at 10:01 AM on January 17, 2018 [29 favorites]

Have you ever served food or drink to someone even though they said no thanks? Have you ever gone hungry because you didn’t want to be rude?

I don't know why you're so insistent on this really poor analogy.

Here's a big reason why it's a really poor analogy, in addition to the point made above about "giving" versus "taking": The consequences of misreading someone who's saying "no" to an unwanted sexual encounter are far more harmful than serving someone an unwanted cup of coffee, and therefore, if you are genuinely unsure and not just making selfish excuses about "mixed messages," you should err on the side of caution.

It's also a poor analogy because if someone serves you that cup of coffee even after you've said no, after you've said "thank you, but I don't like coffee" or "it's too late for coffee, I don't sleep well" or "coffee upsets my stomach"--well, it's pretty fucking rare for someone to continue to pressure you to drink the coffee because they're not selfishly invested in the outcome. They are more concerned about your comfort.

But if you're really insistent on the food-and-drink analogy, instead of coffee, let's use alcohol. There can be real consequences if you pressure someone into drinking when they don't want to; drinking can be traumatic if you have an alcohol problem. If you offer someone a drink and they say "no, thanks" ... do you stop? Or do you wheedle and say, "You should, I made you a drink and you should really try it"? When they say, "I can't drink alcohol," do you say "I understand"... but then hand them a cocktail? When they set the cocktail down, looking uncomfortable, do you pick it back up and force it into their hands? Do you keep going until you wear them down and they finally drink?

It makes no sense for you to do that. Maybe after the first "no thanks" you offer again because you're not sure if it's a polite refusal, but you do so knowing that they might genuinely not want to drink and that it would be terrible to pressure them into it. You wouldn't persistently misread the "no"s as polite "yes"es. You're not that clueless and you have no motivation to force them to drink.* You'd let it go. It would be bizarre not to.

The article that Blasdelb just posted explains this extremely well. When it comes to coercing women into sex, men have a clear motivation to be "confused" by a refusal. They're not offering something; they're asking for something. Accepting a "no" means that they won't get it, and so they selfishly refuse to accept the "no." It's a self-serving lie that frequently persists well past the point it would be considered "just a misunderstanding" in another context.

* Social pressure to drink does exist but I'm assuming you're not this asshole.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:02 AM on January 17, 2018 [22 favorites]

Have you ever served food or drink to someone even though they said no thanks?

What happened wasn't akin to "serving food to someone even though they said no". What happened was akin to serving it, and then shoving a fork into their hands and then harranguing them until they ate it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:06 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

As someone who falls on the spectrum, I have disengaged from potential sexual encounters for doubting consent. I don't trust consent even when it is given verbally. I mistrust my own ability to judge cues, and I am aware that I cannot know for sure that someone providing verbal consent isn't looking to avoid "letting me down" for fear of violence or other retribution.

If this is how you feel, you're doing the right thing. Necessary or not, it's certainly safe.

But the solution to putting people off by incessantly asking for consent isn't to stop worrying about consent. The solution is to start offering consent when it's asked of you. Instead of requesting thing after thing after thing, wait until they ask, and say Yes if you feel like it.

This is not helpful life advice specific to you, or to people on the autism spectrum or any other spectrum. This is for pretty much everyone.

whenever I say this, guys will say, oh, but if I wait for the other person to make the move, nothing will happen.

well then.
posted by queenofbithynia at 10:07 AM on January 17, 2018 [10 favorites]

> It is for me, now. I now have a very clear idea about what I want to do and don't want to do, and I can communicate that. I mean, your lived experience is valid but can we talk about the assumptions here?

On the one hand, all I have to go on is my experience - since I seem to be largely incapable of navigating the waters of non-verbal interpersonal communication, I have leaned on the side of being explicit in my interactions. I speak my mind, try to be clear about what I'm saying and take other peoples statements and actions at face value. It's certainly easier - but it doesn't work very well. The result is that over time, friends have drifted away and coworkers just stop asking me to join them for lunch, etc.

It's mostly OK - I have an spouse whom I love (and I assume loves me back, based on their words and actions) and I'm largely introverted anyway. But there is clearly a large undercurrent of communication that occurs under the waterline that I'm not aware of. Sadly, being aware of it doesn't mean being able to interpret it.

If I'm in the minority, then I suppose my point is moot and consent is obvious to most people.
posted by goddess_eris at 10:07 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

re:"anatomy"

I've been on both ends of the hormones and just because my sexual response slope was way more immediate on testosterone and way slower and more complicated on estrogen was not a pass for me in dudemode to be gross and manipulative about negotiating sex.

(cis) men know the secret to not being horny shitheads on dates. It's called rubbing one off before hand so you don't have to deal with that stupid flushing rush of wanting to fuck mid-date. Manage it, dudes, don't make it a woman's problem.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:08 AM on January 17, 2018 [23 favorites]

>I don't know why you're so insistent on this really poor analogy.

Because I'm not making an analogy. My disclaimer specifically stated I was discussing consent in general, not sexual consent. I do believe that I made a mistake by using the structure of an existing analogy, and it led this conversation astray. My apologies.

I was talking to the comments that suggested "consent is easy" and "of course men understand consent - if they appear otherwise, they are being deliberate and manipulative" (not actual quotes, just paraphrasing). My point was that my experience suggests that consent is not easy - that even in what should be straightforward cases, there can be a lot happening.

>* Social pressure to drink does exist but I'm assuming you're not this asshole.

I don't drink. Interpersonal relationships are confusing enough without some external influence telling me I know what I'm doing. Also, yuck.
posted by goddess_eris at 10:12 AM on January 17, 2018

After you've gotten initial consent, there's usually room to skip specifically asking after that. Instead, have occasional pauses that allow the other person time to react - drawing a hand down their side, stopping to look before moving slowly in for a kiss, and so on

I was trying to explain to someone about how in a gay darkroom/cruisy bar, where verbal consent cues are pretty uncommon, there are still absolutely lots of ways to assess whether someone is actually into what's happening, and it's not just a gross "you've consented to whatever by virtue of being in this space." If you care about consent, you look for eye contact and facial expressions and body language, exactly as you're describing. You use light touch and watch for a positive reaction before doing something more intimate. I've had encounters in that type of space that I felt were clearly, enthusiastically consensual and felt great despite no words being exchanged beyond "hey." I also didn't feel like those rules were particularly difficult to learn (as an allistic adult anyway; I recognize that non-verbal social cues could be difficult for some people).

I've also had a range of shittier experiences, like when some dickwad literally pushed their hand down my pants while I was straining with all my might (eventually using both hands, Jesus) to yank it back out. That wasn't a miscommunication, or even mere inattentiveness on their part. I shouldn't have had to say or do anything beyond gently nudging their hand away, and the reason I know this is that most dudes do not have a problem understanding and respecting that signal. That was one of the most blatant experiences of someone riding over my boundaries, but I've also experienced other instances where a gentle signal didn't work, and in no case I can remember did they go "oh, oh my god, I'm so sorry, are you okay?" like I would expect from a person who cared about consent and inadvertently overstepped; instead they scoffed and walked away. That makes me feel like the problem isn't actually ambiguity as much as it is disrespect.
posted by en forme de poire at 10:15 AM on January 17, 2018 [35 favorites]

I was talking to the comments that suggested "consent is easy" and "of course men understand consent - if they appear otherwise, they are being deliberate and manipulative" (not actual quotes, just paraphrasing). My point was that my experience suggests that consent is not easy - that even in what should be straightforward cases, there can be a lot happening.

But to demonstrate how hard consent is, you used the analogy of serving food and drink to people, and this is one of the easiest demonstrations I've ever seen for how consent works, so I'm still confused as to what's confusing you about the concept of consent. I mean... do you hold your guests down and shove food in their mouths after they say "oh, no thanks" to your proffered snacks? Do you truly spend a lot of time parsing the meaning of "I'm not thirsty" when the glass of water you gave them is set down with nary a sip?
posted by palomar at 10:21 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

It's also a poor analogy because if someone serves you that cup of coffee even after you've said no, after you've said "thank you, but I don't like coffee" or "it's too late for coffee, I don't sleep well" or "coffee upsets my stomach"--well, it's pretty fucking rare for someone to continue to pressure you to drink the coffee because they're not selfishly invested in the outcome. They are more concerned about your comfort.

You know, you'd think, but . . .

One of the side effects of having a girlchild and thinking a lot about teaching her about consent is that I've noticed how rare it is in both my family and my husband's for anyone to really have full bodily autonomy, including the option of saying "no." There's "give grandma a kiss and she'll give you a present" and there's "I'm going to tickle you more even though you've said stop" and omg, the amount of wheedling I've seen my family dole out when they want someone to try a food item. We're working on breaking those patterns, but during phases when my child was incredibly picky, she was brought to tears more than once by a relative who insisted she really needed to try this or that food because it's such a shame, and maybe we can trick her into eating it, even though my daughter very firmly and clearly says "no thank you" when she doesn't want something. I got good at saying "She said no thanks; please respect that." But then I started noticing how our family would do these things to each other, too. Constantly pushing, touching, just . . . not having boundaries, much less respecting them.

I don't think my family is completely unique in this, honestly. Unfortunately.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:22 AM on January 17, 2018 [51 favorites]

>A. no, how bizarre. I might leave the plate or the pitcher out on the counter so that they can take something if they decide they want it, but of course I have never force-fed anyone. What a question.

I find it frustrating that even though I keep saying that the consent issues around extreme behaviors are obvious, that people keep using extreme behaviors as arguments.

If you asked me if I wanted food, and I said no, and you plated food in front of me, what is the consent situation?

> B. As I tried to say earlier, this is deeply dishonest even if unintentionally so, because this is even not about giving an unwelcome offer, but about asking for and taking something that you want. Men who assault women this way do not think of their own bodies as the desirable thing they are offering to someone else.

There are 2 things I disagree with here:
- The first is that dishonesty suggests deliberate manipulation - but I believe that interpersonal communication is substantially more complex than you are suggesting.
- The second is that there are quite a lot of men (and women) who do think of their bodies as the desirable thing that they are offering to someone else. That if the other party would only try it, they would like it - no matter how they protest.
posted by goddess_eris at 10:23 AM on January 17, 2018

I've noticed how rare it is in both my family and my husband's for anyone to really have full bodily autonomy, including the option of saying "no." There's "give grandma a kiss and she'll give you a present" and there's "I'm going to tickle you more even though you've said stop"

Over the holidays, a friend of mine's 3-year-old granddaughter asked her aunt to stop tickling her, which led the aunt to complaint to her parents, which led her parents to insist on a 3-hour long intervention (yes, that word was used) with the 3-year-old's parents about their bad parenting. And the parents stomping out and leaving 24 hours early.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:27 AM on January 17, 2018 [17 favorites]

>I mean... do you hold your guests down and shove food in their mouths after they say "oh, no thanks" to your proffered snacks?

Again with the extremes. No, I do not shove food down their mouths. But I will put out food even though they may have indicated that they don't want any - and some nonzero percentage of the time they will tuck in anyway.

> Do you truly spend a lot of time parsing the meaning of "I'm not thirsty" when the glass of water you gave them is set down with nary a sip?

I do spend a lot of time parsing the meaning of "I'm not thirsty". Because sometimes, people say no thanks to an offer of water - but then later get a drink. Or they say yes please and I give them water but they don't drink it. Clearly, there is some additional information available beyond the obvious, and while it may be straightforward to some people, it isn't straightforward to others.

On top of all that, making the stakes higher doesn't make it any more likely that the communication will be clearer. When I get overexcited I'm nearly incoherent. I have many examples where (after the fact) I've been told that the signals I was giving off were wildly at odds with my actual intentions.
posted by goddess_eris at 10:30 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

Over the holidays, a friend of mine's 3-year-old granddaughter asked her aunt to stop tickling her, which led the aunt to complaint to her parents, which led her parents to insist on a 3-hour long intervention (yes, that word was used) with the 3-year-old's parents about their bad parenting. And the parents stomping out and leaving 24 hours early.

I can't tell you how many low level fights we've had in my family that featured me saying over and over "she said she doesn't want a hug" or "She told you she doesn't like that food, why did you put it on her plate" or whatever. And honestly I am not entirely convinced that my attitudes with my kid are that widespread. I have had to intervene with plenty of other children (strangers, even!) who were being violent toward mine or hugging her or kissing her despite very obvious discomfort on my child's part. Lots of "M, do you like that? Okay, she says she doesn't like that. Stop. Now."
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:35 AM on January 17, 2018 [18 favorites]

it would honestly make this entire thread 10,000 times more bearable if we could just drop the stupid shitty force feeding derail. it's terrible and i need to never see it again, thanks.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:36 AM on January 17, 2018 [54 favorites]

whenever I say this, guys will say, oh, but if I wait for the other person to make the move, nothing will happen.

well then.

I think the "then" in men's minds is that some other man, a bolder man, will make the move and the man that waits will have missed the opportunity. It goes back to viewing sex and relationships as a competition among men and women as the goal or the ball.
posted by FJT at 10:36 AM on January 17, 2018 [15 favorites]

But I will put out food even though they may have indicated that they don't want any - and some nonzero percentage of the time they will tuck in anyway.

I promise you that if Ansari had just left his own body out on the couch -- you know, just set it out there, for later, in case she decided she wanted it -- nobody would have a word to say against him. "I'm still here if you change your mind" isn't the issue or anybody's complaint. but I believe you know that.
posted by queenofbithynia at 10:38 AM on January 17, 2018 [46 favorites]

goddess_eris, at this point, maybe give it a rest; if the takeaway is "for people who have a hard time understanding social cues, it can be hard to understand social cues"... that's fair enough, but repeatedly insisting that people focus on that narrow case ends up seeming like it's meant to be a defense of bad behavior. If you're not trying to defend bad behavior, step back for a while.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:38 AM on January 17, 2018 [14 favorites]

I don't think my family is completely unique in this, honestly. Unfortunately

Def agree. My FB audience is pretty heavily pruned of people I expect to make excuses for abuse at this point, but even so I got a ton of pushback when I posted some lightweight web comic making the "lessons about bodily autonomy taught in childhood are generalized to adulthood" point.
posted by PMdixon at 10:47 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

I wonder whether I should post something to my FB about respecting my kid's bodily autonomy, and how I would expect that of others, to weed out the assholes.
posted by XtinaS at 11:02 AM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]

I apologize to everyone. I had tried to start a conversation about consent from my understanding, but I both chose the wrong starting point (the tea/food case) and I went down the wrong path by trying to make this about me and my specific view of the world. If I upset anyone, I did not mean to and will try harder to be more considerate next time.
posted by goddess_eris at 11:10 AM on January 17, 2018 [4 favorites]

QueenofBithynia:

I can promise that in the past, when I ask for consent, I'm not weird about it, insofar as I don't say strange things like, "Do you provide consent for sexual activity madam?".

It's nice to be told I'm doing the right thing, but then why am I socially punished for it all the same? I get a lot of disrespect from my male peers on a similar basis. Hell, even self-appellate social justice advocates in my social circle have pulled these shaming shenanigans. The alt-lite manchildren that I am unfortunate to work with are no more pleasant if they get a whiff of perceived weakness. People seem to be cruel, mercurial, capricious and arbitrary regardless of the social policies they profess. Are you worriedly empathetic, anxious, depressive? They smell it on you and they'll bite.

This isn't to subtly imply my politics as much as to point out that the people I would have hoped to turn to in my life, progressive folks who emphasize notions like consent, are usually the same ones upholding toxic masculinity and calling me indirect insults for trying to be conscientious about it. The men around me who call so loudly for it are the same creeps who breach consent. This is the primary demographic within which I am integrated. I watch them fat-shame, undermine those with mental illness (in one case I witnessed a girl with psychosis be physically assaulted), and mock people for falling outside the bounds of conventional attractiveness. When you express concern, you are shouted down. It's disappointing.

To link this digression back into the main discussion, and provide a segue to a different point: This is why it is exceedingly easy for me to believe women's testimonies, because even people who have presence in a seemingly progressive environment are just as filthy and corrupt as those outside. There is far less gatekeeping than one would hope. Especially in the case of men, it is a mask to provide cover for heinous acts. It is always about power, and power is sick.
posted by constantinescharity at 11:47 AM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]

If women didn't reinforce the patriarchy, it wouldn't be able to continue. Toxic masculinity poisons us all.

Women will absolutely reinforce the pepe le pew version of courtship, and that's confusing, but the answer is still only have sex if you can clearly consent and they can clearly consent. This doesn't mean the "hilarious" jokes about contracts and "may I put my hand on your thigh, may I move it up a quarter inch" etc. It does mean that people of any gender who give a mixed signal where a signal is slow down or stop should have that listened to even if they didn't mean it. I think that will teach more people to be clear and understand their own consent.

Now, the stumbling block in heteronormative spaces is that men will have to walk away from sex they know they can "get" and suffer social consequences. I think this is something men should be willing to do. In the same way that most women walk to their car with their keys held as a weapon (and a million other things we're taught to do to avoid rape), men should avoid rape by being ok with walking away and letting things fall where they may.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 12:04 PM on January 17, 2018 [11 favorites]

It's nice to be told I'm doing the right thing, but then why am I socially punished for it all the same?

This is how oppressive systems replicate. You are being punished for rejecting an oppressive system. You are being urged to capitulate to its precepts and demands. Yes, even by people who claim to share your worldview. We are all swimming in it.

When people ask "why don't men do more to fight patriarchy?", this is the answer. It isn't just ideological. Doing the right thing comes with real costs. Moving against entrenched systems of power has been made difficult on purpose. When you reject a system that others have accepted, they will react with antagonism to excuse their own choices. I'm sorry. It sucks.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 12:17 PM on January 17, 2018 [44 favorites]

> The result is that over time, friends have drifted away and coworkers just stop asking me to join them for lunch, etc.

It's a minefield for sure, and with the alternative being stepping on a bomb, I've decided that I would rather not value the friendship of people who are put off by insisting on unambiguous signals.

One could argue that being able to make such a choice is a type of privilege, and I would not contest such a claim.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 12:22 PM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Those who defend or minimize what Aziz did, take a year off from sex (it won't kill you), seek educational materials, and learn how to see and understand this situation from the point of view of those who see this as assault. That way you can understand what you should do if you get into this situation or better, how to avoid creating this situation. Because the "foreplay and seduction"rape culture has to and hopefully will change and you don't want to get this wrong in the future, regardless of what you think was normal in the past.

Also, if you still really think this is "unfair" to Aziz, so what? Hundreds of millions of innocent women have been victims, are we supposed to stop and halt everything if one (allegedly innocent) man gets caught up in the push for sanity in the sexual assault crisis that has always been there.
posted by Anchorite_of_Palgrave at 12:33 PM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

> There's "give grandma a kiss and she'll give you a present" and there's "I'm going to tickle you more even though you've said stop" and omg, the amount of wheedling I've seen my family dole out when they want someone to try a food item.

> "lessons about bodily autonomy taught in childhood are generalized to adulthood"

I'm glad this got brought up. As a kid, for a variety of complicated reasons, I really disliked physical affection from my family, but I also recognized that it wasn't optional. I remember as a young kid actually hiding under the bed to get away from my father when he wouldn't stop tickling me. But even with other relatives, it just was not acceptable to say no to a hug or a kiss or whatever. That was considered impolite and wrong.

And I've come to realize I can draw a straight line from this early "training" to the way I've acted in intimate relationships later in life. I learned that the "correct" way to respond to unwanted physical contact is just to freeze up and let the other person do what they're going to do. So when someone started pushing to go farther, I would just go along with it. I've just been following the blueprint for physical interactions that I learned as a kid.

It actually was discussions on mefi about teaching kids that they can say no to unwanted physical contact* that first made me aware of this. It didn't even occur to me that people might actually choose not to force kids to hug relatives when they didn't want to. Of course, I come from a family where my mother would cave in to pretty much whatever my narcissistic grandmother demanded, but even more functional families, I imagine the default is "hug grandma before we leave".

I know in someways this is tangential to the discussion, but in other ways, it isn't, because it highlights how girls** are trained from an early age that our bodies aren't our own, and if we don't like what someone is doing to us, then we're the ones in the wrong, not them.

I don't plan on having kids, but if I did, I would make very sure that I taught them from an early age that they always have a right to say no to physical contact, no matter who the other person is.

*And by physical contact, I mean like hugs from relatives. Of course, I learned all about "bad touches" and whatnot, but that was like, don't let strangers touch you, not, what if a relative is touching you in a way that isn't necessarily bad, but is unwanted.

**Probably boys too, but I'm just speaking from personal experience, and my instinct is that this is more commonly enforced with girls, and also enforced for far longer.
posted by litera scripta manet at 12:34 PM on January 17, 2018 [21 favorites]

I know in someways this is tangential to the discussion, but in other ways, it isn't, because it highlights how girls** are trained from an early age that our bodies aren't our own, and if we don't like what someone is doing to us, then we're the ones in the wrong, not them.

Not tangential, or at least not entirely — a huge chunk of white/male/straight supremacy is bound up in body ownership and control.
posted by Celsius1414 at 12:56 PM on January 17, 2018 [6 favorites]

Well and also all of this kind of gets right down to our (incorrect) assumptions about who rapes and what rape looks like. During one of my FB arguments, someone literally said it's not like he's some rapist hiding in the bushes, never mind that those rapists are pretty damned rare and the Aziz Ansari sort of "nice" sexual assault perpetrator far more common. We teach children to acquiesce to family demands on their bodies, but teach them (still!) to watch out for the creepy guy in the bushes who wants to engage in bad touching, when weird Uncle Ed who won't stop tickling you is far more likely to cause your child sexual harm.

We want to believe that sexual assault perpetrators are inhuman monsters, because then they're easy to identify and to warn ourselves away from. We want to believe that sexual assault victims did something to invite the behavior, because we don't want it to happen to us. But all of that is wrong. It has nothing to do with the reality of sexual crime.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:08 PM on January 17, 2018 [35 favorites]

A thought to toss into this discussion, that relates to the power aspect of why guys don't ask for what they want and just act instead.

One of the most difficult things for me to understand in my fucked up marriage (which did not involve sexual assault, but a lot of emotional abuse) was that my now-former husband absolutely would not, under any circumstances, tell me what he wanted. Not spontaneously; not if I asked; not if I demanded. Never. This was puzzling to me for a very long time, and frustrating too. I was offering a partnership where we both set the course of our lives. I wanted to give him what he wanted! But there was absolutely no way that he would divulge that.

What I eventually came to understand was that, to him, asking for what one wanted was simply weakness and a tactical error. It was a vulnerability that an opponent would exploit and use to bring a person low, period. He literally could not bring himself to do it. And in fact, that was the explanation for how he responded to me when I asked for things, which was the other side of this mystifying and very painful situation. Ironically, in our marriage, I was upfront about wanting to have a sex life; his obsession with this power dynamic meant that he felt empowered by watching me hurt as he shut me out sexually. But was the same about a zillion other things too--housework, money, parenting.

When I read about all this stuff about consent and its absence, about why guys lie that they'll stop when told to but then press on anyway--when I read about the power aspects and the drive to conquest--I think about the strain of toxic masculinity that infected my ex-husband. For guys who approach sex as a power game, asking is a tactical error and a weakness they will never reveal to their opponents.

I can't stop thinking about that Dworkin quote upthread, about recognizing their humanity despite the evidence to the contrary. I'm feeling pretty bitter and thinking, you know, if #metoo mean that assholes who work like this get their humanity status revoked, and they have to work and make amends to gain it back, that is a-fuckin-OK with me.
posted by Sublimity at 1:55 PM on January 17, 2018 [37 favorites]

whenever I say this, guys will say, oh, but if I wait for the other person to make the move, nothing will happen.

You know this, but it's such a false dichotomy. Noting that men tend to be the ones who ask for sex first, says nothing about how they ask. Coercion is just one shitty way of asking.

I'm very confident that the species will not die out, nor will millions of shy women be involuntarily celibate from the inability to ask themselves, if guys stop pressuring women who are clearly reluctant at best to have sex. Ladies may even feel more comfortable initiating!!
posted by msalt at 2:29 PM on January 17, 2018 [6 favorites]

I've been fighting about this and despairing all over the place, because aside from the grey areas, "Grace" said no really fucking clearly, both verbally and nonverbally. She moved her hand away from Ansari's penis and he moved it right back there. That happened multiple times. She physically got up and moved away from him and he chased her around the motherfucking room. She told him she didn't want to have sex and he was like "oh yeah cool" and then shortly afterwards started propositioning her for sex again.

Because he gave no fucks about what she wanted, but only about what he wanted. I do not understand how that is not more clear.
posted by corb at 2:58 PM on January 17, 2018 [30 favorites]

Yep.

Something I keep asking people is "When did Grace consent?" and then I get a whole lot of rape culture BS about how just going back to his apartment is consenting and, uh, no.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 3:03 PM on January 17, 2018 [16 favorites]

I do not understand how that is not more clear.

I have come to the conclusion that many people's coping mechanism for the sheer amount of oppression and coercion in the world is to simply not see it. And they're not really able to switch that on and off.
posted by PMdixon at 3:06 PM on January 17, 2018 [19 favorites]

I get a whole lot of rape culture BS about how just going back to his apartment is consenting and, uh, no.

this is where you make the shareable google doc titled "men to never be alone with" and send it to everyone you know
posted by poffin boffin at 3:53 PM on January 17, 2018 [26 favorites]

Dan Sheehan: "Dudes are scared of "ruining the moment" by stopping to ask if something is okay like the girl is just gonna turn into bats or something"

the replies are amazing:
"Wait do men know we can do that"
"60% of the time I’m bats every time."
"Wait, my partner turning into bats isn't normal?"
posted by numaner at 3:56 PM on January 17, 2018 [27 favorites]

I didn't actually RTFA (the one with her description of what happened) until recently. Based on the buzz, I'd kind of expected things to be less clear cut. I'm flabbergasted that anyone could read that account and call what happened OK, non-coercive, or consensual. The fact that so many people apparently do is the most unsettling part of this to me.

I don't spend a lot of non-work time around heteronormative people or circles and it's not to say that queer and/or kinky spaces can't be VERY problematic around consent too, but the only place I'd expect to experience something like that is in a negotiated scene.

The part that really made my blood run cold more than any other was the "claw" thing. I've never had someone put their fingers in my mouth like that except as an expression of dominance and/or sadism. It's astonishing how invasive it and disempowering it feels in part because it functions like a gag (and it's also gross -- I seriously doubt he took the time to wash his hands before doing that). If someone I trusted did that to me outside of a negotiated BDSM scene, I'd be pissed. If it was on a first date with a celebrity -- who might have connections to people that could harm me or threaten me in order to keep me quiet and who kept doing despite my having already said no and appearing uncomfortable and trying to get away from him -- I'd probably go into full on panic attack mode and have a very difficult time even gathering my thoughts well enough to speak, much less find my clothes and get out of there ASAP.

The more I think about it -- what he did, how it would affect me, and how people are reacting -- the more upsetting it becomes.
posted by treepour at 4:14 PM on January 17, 2018 [19 favorites]

"Dudes are scared of "ruining the moment" by stopping to ask if something is okay like the girl is just gonna turn into bats or something"

I don't spend a lot of non-work time around heteronormative people or circles and it's not to say that queer and/or kinky spaces can't be VERY problematic around consent too, but the only place I'd expect to experience something like that is in a negotiated scene.

Yeah --- the "if I ask if it's OK it'll kill the mood" (or worse, "if HE asks if it's OK it'll kill the mood") reaction being SO HUGE has really driven home to me that I don't understand the expectations around m/f sex and maybe don't necessarily want to. Most of my sexual encounters have started with "so you want to get naked now" and been punctuated with "can I do the thing with your thing?" and the ones that haven't have tended to be on the less enjoyable end of the scale. I seriously cannot understand this idea that checking in as you go is incompatible with filthy dirty monkey sex.
posted by PMdixon at 4:30 PM on January 17, 2018 [11 favorites]

I feel terrible for Grace and terrible for everyone who has experienced something like this. I just wanted to say, as a lady who sleeps with dudes, that this is not a universal experience. I am grateful to have only dated men who are respectful and have been sensitive to any signs that I didn't want to do something (and immediately responsive to any direct requests to stop doing something). I can't say that many of them have verbally asked for consent, but they have clearly picked up on whether I am into whatever's happening, or not. Hearing the story about Ansari makes me question how many of my male friends/acquaintances might have ever done something similarly horrible, when I wouldn't have considered that in the past.
posted by pinochiette at 5:06 PM on January 17, 2018 [6 favorites]

I am grateful to have only dated men who are respectful and have been sensitive to any signs that I didn't want to do something (and immediately responsive to any direct requests to stop doing something).

Same, I've had some terrible sex with whiny, self-absorbed guys but it's never veered into coercive territory. I've had some inappropriate touches from strangers, but overall I have been extremely lucky. Looking around at how common these stories are is a slowly dawning horror of just how widespread this toxic form of dehumanizing misogyny really is. We can do better than this, and I hope it causes some dudes to think twice, even if it's for selfish reasons.
posted by Feyala at 5:35 PM on January 17, 2018 [6 favorites]

> I seriously cannot understand this idea that checking in as you go is incompatible with filthy dirty monkey sex.

Me neither. I'm a straight middle-aged guy and I have been told by (a tiny sample of) "experienced" ladies that they want a guy who knows how to fuck to get on with it and fuck, usually after they've decided I'm a cold fish. I'm ready to sign up for xarnop's Netflix and... just Netflix dating service.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 6:55 PM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

[explicit and kinky, if you want to skip]

Sex isn't a scarcity model. I keep seeing this trope that "If men accept 'no,' they'll have less sex or no sex at all!" and that's just complete bullshit. You may not have sex THIS ONE PARTICULAR TIME but you will almost certainly have MORE, BETTER SEX IN THE LONG RUN if you model good consent and stop conflating aggression with initiation. Being assertive is only half the conversation. The other half is listening – with ALL your senses.

Both skills are essential for all parties. These are not gendered items! We have to stop thinking of sex as a mountain to be scaled. It is just as assertive to pause, plateau or wind down a vibe as it is to enhance it. Escalation as a term has some really nasty connotations – pitching sex as a pinnacle to achieve. It's not like that. The road to erotic pleasures has many possible destinations, and while it's true that physical arousal, including orgasm, has levels – which we conceive of as heightening or deepening – you don't actually "get to the top" because there's no single peak. It's more like an sexy archipelago, with dozens of dreamy little islands spread out in a buffet. No moment or partner can take you to all of them, but with enough patience and muster you can visit many.

So I thought I'd use my post to model good hookup consent!

(I'm definitely no shining star, btw! I've had my share of cringey, awkward sex moments. Done things in the queasy lustre of youth I'm not proud of, read situations wrong, owned regrettably bad encounters. Experienced two assaults and many more coercive acts– mostly at the hands of cis men, though a few queer folks are mixed in there. So the knowledge I have now is hard won. And, critically, subject to ongoing review and improvement.)

* * *

A CONCATENATED NIGHT of CONSENT HIGHLIGHTS
Word for word – exact lines I said during a pretty hot, naughty hookup I had last weekend. If you don't think consent is sexy after this – no power in the verse.

>> Me, a gay woman. Often read femme.

So I've been dancing all night. It's Friday, which means queer club, which means Babetown USA as far as the eye can see. I'm hoping for a saucy fling but it's been three hours already and though I've had a great time on the floor, I'm not vibing with anyone special. Lights flash on, I head to coat check. Grab my bag and wrap my scarf tight. Just as I make for the exit – lo and behold, a fine queer babe appears out of thin air. The chemistry is thick and instant. Hello dreamer, where you been?

0: She gives me a flirty smile and says, "I love your top!" which I know is universal code for "I think you're really cute and we should definitely talk." "Oh, I got it down the street," I say. "Hey, I'm Fritillary." She gives me a shy up-and-down and offers a handshake, stepping closer. "Sam. Wow some party, huh?" "Totally wild! I haven't danced that much in ages. How about you, doing anything fun after?" "Not really," she says. "Just heading home with some friends..." I eagerly note her slight pause. "What are you getting into?" "I'm open," I say. At this point, sensing a strong uptick in flirt, I'm checking us both for sobriety levels. We seem clear and level. Sweet! "Night is young..." I trail off suggestively. "Well," she goes, leaning forward and standing on tiptoe so I'm looking right at her lips, "You wanna come and do nothing with me?" "Hell yeah!" We chat for a bit about queer stuff until her pals pull up in a cab. She starts to climb in and I notice there's only room for five. The car's full. Her friends look quizzically at me so I introduce myself around. "Hey Sam said you're all heading home, is there space? Is it okay if I join?" Alright consent-modelers: this is an important check because it gives Sam an out if she's changed her mind about taking me, basically a stranger, back to where she lives! And her friends can weigh in if they think I'm a bad call, which is a vital part of community safety. Sam gives them a devilish wink and says "It's no prob! Come in." I look around, they're all grinning like fools. Good vibes. They're pleased for Sam. She smiles at me, beckoning to the seat beside her. I pile in!

1: Sam's friends trickle off and we're left alone in the main room of her house. She scoots closer, touches my elbow and asks me, "So what do you want do? We could watch some TV..." I can tell she's a bit shy and probably has less experience then me, so I reply in a slow voice, flicking my lashes coyly, "Well, I was really hoping we could make out. What do you think about that?" She promptly grabs me by the hand and leads me to her room, drawing my face close and covering me in kisses. See how I expressed my desires but also put the ball in her court? If Sam was unenthused or too nervous to take charge I would have offered a sweet goodbye and seen myself out right then. Or maybe redirected to a neutral, nonsexual activity if she seemed keen to hang.

2: We're making out hardcore but before hands stray too much I kiss her neck and whisper into her ear, "I just want you to know that I'm happy with anything we do or don't do tonight. You want me to slow down, change something, stop, all you have to do is ask. Your call. Just say the word. Okay?" Deliciously, Sam doesn't so much say yes as moan it.

3: She's pulled me to the floor and has stripped off her outer layer. She's initiated a step into nudity. Her choice. She's wearing a camisole. I finger the strap and say, "Can I take this off?" I wait until she nods yes and bites her lip before tugging.

4: Sam's on top, grinding on my inner thigh. She's rocking harder and harder, trying to get more pressure and momentum. I take this as a cue to grab her ass with both hands, pulling her closer. I verbally check my move by saying, "Harder?" and am confirmed with a nod and a deep luxurious sigh.

5: We've switched positions, all her clothes are off and half of mine are. We've moved about quite a bit and I notice her head is about to bump up on a wood cabinet leg. I ask her to pause for a sec. I put my hand between her skull and the furniture and scoop her body down, pulling her a few inches lower. Basic consideration! "Back to it?" I say, and she's lunging for me again.

6: I'm kissing my way down Sam's torso and I pause to give her nipples a lick. "Are you sensitive?" I say. No response.. but her head's flung way back and she's been moaning like crazy, so I'm not sure she heard me. Ambiguous. I try another lick, then barest graze of my teeth and a light stroke on the side of her breast with a finger. No response again. This time her moans get weaker as well. When I take my hand away Sam doesn't reach for it, pulling me back to that spot like she has for other body parts. This is a cue, folks – she's not feeling this move at all. I leave her tits alone and head for her thighs. As soon as I go elsewhere, moans and wriggles increase. Good! She's still into playing, just not that one thing. 3/4 of me is going with the flow, and 1/4 of me is carefully monitoring every move I make to see how it takes or what might be fun to try next. I'm focused on both our experiences, but I always tip in favor of hers – especially because we're new partners – it's too easy to slip toward satisfying my own bias. She seems to like some light thigh bites, and starts breathing heavier. "Do you want more?" "Yes please!"

7. Sam's really worked up, breathing hard and flushing all over, back arched. I stroke my hand over the top of her pubic bone and say "How do you feel about fingers?" "Really good," she says. "One or two?" "Start with one then add more." "Okay, how about a lick to get me going." She smiles. I bring my hand up to her mouth and trace her lip. She opens wide and sucks two fingers, drawing them deep into her throat until she's choking a bit, licking and nibbling the delicate inner creases. I pull my hand out slightly when I hear her sputter, but she draws me back in instantly. Well then! I spread my fingers into a slight V and she swallows even deeper. I rub the pads of my fingertips onto the silky inner tissue of her cheeks, she ripples with pleasure. Yup, the claw! Not a terrible idea if you're both into it. Unlike Aziz I didn't force my hand into her mouth – or bring up such an intimate and loaded move without warning. No, we worked our way to it. First, Sam gave me multiple indications that she liked rough play in general. (No guarantee, but certain predilections come in clusters.) Then, when I offered this particular move, I gave her outs – first out loud, "How about this." Then I paused at her lips, let her decide whether or not to indulge. Finally I give her the option to take me as deep as she wants, no added pressure. I even back out to see if she draws me in! Hot! She goes and goes, covering me to the hilt in wet gooey strings of saliva. The experience gives me additional valuable info: Sam, it turns out, digs messy. And she might like a little bit of breath play.

8. I'm fucking Sam with my right hand and she's rocking hard, begging me to go rougher. I slowly add a second finger, just like she asked before. I've got my left hand on her chest, keeping our connection close – it's easy to feel alienated from a partner when you can't see their face. She takes that hand and draws it around her neck. I knew it! I'm secretly pleased with myself for having guessed correctly earlier. It's a satisfying little Ding! Well done self, you paid good attention. "Do you like this? Do you want this?" I ask. Of course I won't be doing actual breath play with a near-stranger, like choking her carotid, compressing her trachea or restricting her airflow. That's super dangerous and not to be undertaken lightly! (Plus necks are super triggery for a lot of folks, you don't initiate something so serious in a first unscripted encounter!) But I will certainly simulate breath play by wrapping my hand around her neck, being careful where my fingers land, and giving a little squeeze now and then – just enough to make her aware of the extra pressure, like wearing a choker. She says "yes" so full steam ahead!

9: I can feel Sam building up to an orgasm. She's close but she's been hovering at the point of yes-almost-not quite-oh nearly there-yes more please- for a couple minutes now. I've been teasing her, working my fingers and covering her in sloppy nips. "Do you want to come?" She's gasping so hard she can barely speak. "Tell me!" I command. "Tell me you want it! Come, Sam!" To be real, I don't really care if she comes or not – because by all indications we're both having a great time, so who cares what happens apart from that? But I say it to give her permission and a goal. That can be really valuable, especially when as women you're saturated from birth with messages that tell you not to take what's yours, seize the moment. I'm totally right! The words tip the scale. When I say "Come!" Sam gushes instantly.

10: Sam pauses, catching her breath. I sense she's done for the night so I curl up next to her and say, "Need a break?" She nods and I cuddle up, petting her arm in long soothing strokes. I say, "How about some water?" She sighs "Yeessss, perfect," so I run downstairs and fetch us a tall glass. "What can I do for you," she asks when I get back. "TBH? Not a thing. I'm totally happy right now. I just want to make your body hum – I'm perfectly content." And it's true, I am. I feel totally satisfied. She squeezes my hand and pulls me close again. "Let's sleep," she says. "Mm, sounds good. Maybe we can do coffee in the morning? I have an early appointment so I might have to run, but if we have time I'd love to split a cup..." I ruffle her hair a bit and lazily kiss the back of her neck. I want her to see that I'm available, even if our time is brief. In truth I probably could have gone another two or three rounds, but ya know what? My date's tapped out, and when she wants to stop, we stop. I'm never going to push someone. Also I generally suggest brunch or coffee in case a date wants to decompress, but this time because of my meeting I give Sam a heads up that I may have to leave before she wakes. I don't want her to think I'm a jerk for taking off early!

11: Sam's still snoozing when my alarm goes off, so I scribble my name and number and a cute message on her dry erase board while I'm getting dressed. She rustles awake and I tell her I had a great time. She leans forward and pulls me in for a sleepy goodbye kiss, going "Mmmm." I say I've left my number if she wants to talk or have a round two! Cutie, she's already drifting back to sleep. I always offer contact info if a date wants to check in. But I only mention a second fling if I'm sincerely into it.

12: Sam texts me that afternoon from her library job. "I had the best time! I'm so glad I ran into you!" I can't agree more, I've been glowing all day. I tell her so.

THIS IS WHAT A CONSENSUAL ENCOUNTER FEELS LIKE.

* * *

Notice how we both had power? Both made moves? Both checked in the whole way through?
How we ended blissfully, pleased with ourselves and each other – admiring?

My dudes. It could be like this all the time.

If we're tallying – I was the "top" for nearly all of this encounter. But what does that really mean? Look closely and you'll see that Sam initiated several key moments. She invited me home. She took me downstairs. She leaned in to kiss me first. She took off the first clothing item. Did I take charge, smooth us through some shyness, set the overall pace? Yeah, absolutely. But I also paid exquisite attention to her wants and needs, her subtle and overt cues. We both advanced and retreated the whole night. That's what seduction is. Mutual, hot, intimate, trusting, vulnerable, exploratory. Willing to be brave, mistaken and self-correcting.

Last thing: I want to talk about the idea of chase and conquest, and separate it from the thrills of flirting, novelty and discovery. Me, I like wild rough sex and near-anonymous encounters! It's fun! That's a totally okay thing to like and want. Personally, I often go out cruising, hoping for a nifty encounter with a cute dyke. But you know what? I never: have sex with someone I don't fundamentally like, respect and desire. I don't: initiate or respond to encounters I suspect will be unfulfilling. I don't: take advantage of power differentials. I don't: have sex when I'm in a bad headspace. I don't: expect or feel entitled to take someone home. People are not interchangeable. Nor are they playthings. I've had lots of sexual encounters and I cherish all of them for different reasons. I do my best to make sure every partner I have is enthusiastic, sound of mind and heart, and feels erotically and emotionally fulfilled by our experience. We're going to remember each other forever! I don't go in with an agenda. I'm not invested in a particular outcome. I don't check boxes or count off orgasms. I don't have a timeframe. I don't scheme, leave out vital information, or make myself out to be someone I'm not. I'm honest about my yays and nays – sometimes I go home alone. I look out for our sexual health, even when that means I have to turn down activities that might be super fun. I check in frequently before, during and after, all night, both verbally and nonverbally. I honor boundaries in a spirit of good faith and caution. I know my levels of acceptable risk. And if all we do is share a chat? Or brief makeout? Or they're like, "Nope, not feeling it," before we even leave the club? I am satisfied, because I've had a new interesting experience with a real live human being.

If your idea of sex is "sticking someone, anyone, with my dick," then I am here to tell you you are living the most unimaginative, stifled, narrow sliver of sexual wonder and possibility. And you should be ashamed, and sad for yourself, that you have traded a rich world of consensual play for... that... creepy hollow mask. You're missing out, brah. With a foundation of trust and respect you can go places that that rapey one-sided wankfests will never touch.
posted by fritillary at 7:15 PM on January 17, 2018 [57 favorites]

What fascinates me is that in my social media feed it only seems to be discussed among women (and one gay man) and there seems to be a generational divide. The group of women in their 20s and 30s (where I fall) think this encounter was clearly not consensual and the group of women in their 40s and 50s think this was a really bad sexual encounter, but that she consented to it. There are a few older women getting into the discussion, but those women tend be closer to the 20s and 30s point of view.

We seem to be going round and round on this multiple times on multiple facebook pages and everyone is firmly entrenched.

If it were men who I was fighting with, I'd get it. I'd be grumpy about it, but it would conform to my expectations. It's these women -- these smart, talented, otherwise really awesome women -- doubling down on their position that this was just bad sex that has been frustrating.

They're all very hung up on the fact that Grace didn't leave and nothing any of the younger women say will change their perspective on this.

Has this been anyone else's experience? My own read on it is that for these women if this particular encounter is seen as assault, then they would to re-evaluate their own past encounters. However, I'm not sure why that's falling along generational lines as clearly as it is.
posted by JustKeepSwimming at 7:53 PM on January 17, 2018 [6 favorites]

On Sexual Consent, From a Woman Who Used to Be a Man

There’s a specific dynamic between men and women, at the heart of my own subsequent experiences with straight men, that I never experienced when I was having sex with men as a man. It’s a feeling of being utterly disposable except as a body to be fucked. With other men, even in the most casual occasions — at a bathhouse or in the back room of a bar — I never completely lost the sense of the men I was with as creatures with minds and feelings, maybe because doing that would mean debasing myself in the same way. But I’ve been with men as a woman who treated me as a creature entirely separate from themselves and only good for one thing, especially in those moments when they’re utterly consumed with the desire to sleep with me.

It’s precisely in this complete objectification, this utter lack of regard, and the social understanding that men are stronger than women, where it became so hard for me to say no so many times, even when I wanted to. I hadn’t started taking hormones when I slept with Gary, and I was going to the gym several times a week, so I was in the same physical shape as I was when I presented as a man three months earlier. But the simple fact that I wore a dress and makeup made me feel physically weaker, perhaps because I could sense that Gary saw me as weaker than any man. My sense of physical weakness, combined with my perception that he didn’t actually care how I felt, made it easier to just be the glorified sex toy he wanted me to be than to risk the possibility of his anger and potential violence; rather tolerate his cock than feel his fist.

Gary was the first time but not the last time as a woman that I was offered sex and wanted to say no, but didn’t. He was the first but not the last time I could tell a guy knew I didn’t really want to have sex with him, but I still did. He was when I first did not enjoy hooking up with a guy as a girl, and I saw in Gary’s eyes as he growled, “Yeah, that’s right, suck that big cock,” that he didn’t give a shit about my enjoyment — that he actually took pleasure in me not enjoying myself, in getting away with something he shouldn’t have. That was when I first knew what it was like to feel raped, even when I wasn’t.

posted by lazuli at 8:13 PM on January 17, 2018 [22 favorites]

From above, "the Inimitable Lindy West in the New York Times." After laying out the history of this conversation, stretching over four decades, she concludes:

The notion of affirmative consent did not fall from space in October 2017 to confound well-meaning but bumbling men; it was built, loudly and painstakingly and in public, at great personal cost to its proponents, over decades... Nuanced conversations about consent and gendered socialization have been happening every single day that Aziz Ansari has spent as a living, sentient human on this earth. The reason they feel foreign to so many men is that so many men never felt like they needed to listen. Rape is a women’s issue, right? Men don’t major in women’s studies.

It may feel like the rules shifted overnight, and what your dad called the thrill of the chase is now what some people are calling assault. Unfortunately, no one — even plenty of men who call themselves feminists — wanted to listen to feminist women themselves. We tried to warn you. We wish you’d listened, too.

Yes! Can we hear that one sentence again? "Nuanced conversations about consent and gendered socialization have been happening every single day that Aziz Ansari has spent as a living, sentient human on this earth."
posted by salvia at 8:13 PM on January 17, 2018 [22 favorites]

Sam Bee has a take on this.

*Sorry, I can't find another link than one to the Full Frontal facebook page.
posted by amanda at 9:15 PM on January 17, 2018 [5 favorites]

queenofbythynia (hope I got that right) said waaaay upthread "they're not offering something, they're asking for something. that makes all the difference." I was struck by how perfect an encapsulation that is. Men Offering!!! Vs trying to get. What a different world that would be.
(Hope this isn't a reapeat, I have many more comments to get through, but however how magnificently worthy the discussion, it takes something from you to keep at it.)
posted by eggkeeper at 10:28 PM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm late to this thread and my input will probably resonate poorly, so bear with me.

As a racialized/brown woman, I did read this story with a Lot. Of. Doubt.

I'm not disagreeing at all that Aziz behaved poorly once "Grace" was in his apartment.

And I'm not disagreeing at all that the behavioral norms for men's behavior in assessing and respecting women's consent in sexual encounters are also abysmally low, across the board.

I'm still on the "not assault" side.

I have been a woman of color for my whole life, born in raised in North America. Every time I have tried to talk to well-educated white women friends about my perceptions of issues of safety and consent when it comes to dating white men, I have been dismissed while also being put down for my healthy sexual interest in men of color. IME too many white women don't seem able to admit how awful their own men are until they experience the same injustice in the context of having that encounter with a colored man (same goes for daring to want somewhat aggressive or "coercive" sex, which apparently is A-Okay for white people to want in the strict context of Fifty Shades of Grey, just not okay for anyone from the Fifty Shades of Brown ethnic spectrum to also demonstrate initiative in wanting). It's always been obvious to me that the majority of white people I have to live around want recognizing sexual assaulters to be about recognizing dark-skinned people (i.e. people pre-marked by God or whatever).

And maybe that's even okay, due to the extremely ambiguously nature of how trauma operates -- if we can admit that's what we're doing as we're doing it. Mother Earth knows every human population on her has been doing this same scapegoating nonsense since the inception of "higher" consciousness in our species.

If it turns out the young woman in this encounter was a young white woman, I will have far less pity for her with respect to the "lack of agency". Historically speaking, white people have raped and genocided the Indians in their colonial lands for enough centuries now, that to say to me she didn't have the personal agency to say, "No, you're really not hearing me. I don't want to have sex. Let's call it a night" is crap. This, in the land where it is socially acceptable for young white girls to wear slut-slutty yoga pants to work, keep a copy of the "Karma Sutra" by their nightstand, and "go Indian" when drunk while also considering themselves to be more "civilized" than any native, black or brown person around them (come north of the border, where "Dirty F**king Indians" and *f**king dirty indians* are Definitely. Things.).

I do in fact agree that all men need to be invested in sex as a mutual experience with a person -- and not just an object.

And I do in fact agree that it's slimey of men to use a 10-year age difference to try and mold their sexual encounter with a younger, naive woman into some 50 Shades fantasy (also noting that there is not a single comment in this thread has called much attention to how creepy that detail about the age disparity is... I don't care about the "half your age + 7 years" rule. Western/white people set the bar low by being comfortable with tolerating how 30-something men are expected to out-compete 20-something men for 20-something women, as far as I'm concerned).

However this thread does read to me like a conversation for white people to have about the monolithic nature of men, thanks to a brown man who has more graciously owned misunderstanding on his part in that encounter than any white man accused on the spot so far. If this was not the case, it seems to me more self-identifying women of color would also be sharing their experiences in this thread.

TL;DR. Since this conversation seems to be happening primarily within the dominant North American culture (which is ~60-80% "white"-driven at any given time), it may be that more intersectionality needs to be applied in order to best develop a clear solution that works well for everyone.
posted by human ecologist at 11:28 PM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]

Slut shaming fucking sucks, regardless of who is doing it. There you go.
posted by threetwentytwo at 2:27 AM on January 18, 2018 [19 favorites]

Has this been anyone else's experience? My own read on it is that for these women if this particular encounter is seen as assault, then they would to re-evaluate their own past encounters. However, I'm not sure why that's falling along generational lines as clearly as it is.

I've actually had a different experience, although it's probably an outlier due to my friend's background, but I was arguing on FB until the wee hours about this with an old HS friend, who is firmly early 30s, like me. She kept throwing around phrases like "holding [Grace] accountable for her actions" and "personal responsibility" and seemed to have absolutely no concept of why a 22yo non-celebrity might find it difficult to just scream "no" and leave the situation. She doesn't believe she's being victim-blamey when she uses this language, even though to me she clearly is. I keep encountering people who don't read any kind of "no" into Grace's actions or words, and I'm at a total loss when speaking to them because they're either being super disingenuous, or potentially super rapey in their sexual encounters. She clearly said "no".
posted by catch as catch can at 3:27 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

If it turns out the young woman in this encounter was a young white woman, I will have far less pity for her with respect to the "lack of agency".

This is shockingly misogynist, and in line with every other hot take where you get to say shockingly misogynist things as long as you add the qualifier “white women.”

Intersectionality doesn’t just work for understanding oppression. It works for understanding your own anger. And there’s a shit ton of people who think the modifier “white” means they get to unload anything they want on “woman.”
posted by schadenfrau at 3:57 AM on January 18, 2018 [56 favorites]

Not to abuse the edit window: this is obviously only true in circles where people know and care what “intersectional” means. But WOW does it seem to be true in those circles.
posted by schadenfrau at 4:09 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I’m 100% on Grace’s side vis a vis the encounter.

But it wouldn’t surprise me if part of the reason Babe approached Grace (not standard practice) and didn’t give Ansari very much time to respond was partly informed by his darling-but-outsider position.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:10 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

...that is, race and Muslim background.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:11 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

The group of women in their 20s and 30s (where I fall) think this encounter was clearly not consensual and the group of women in their 40s and 50s think this was a really bad sexual encounter, but that she consented to it

This was my experience with my coworkers, although two of them are in their sixties. All women. Lots of unexpected "what did she expect when she went back to his apartment?" Not a conversation I'll be trying to have again this week.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:59 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

If this was not the case, it seems to me more self-identifying women of color would also be sharing their experiences in this thread.

I’m a woman of color who has been here and I still think Ansari did wrong and there is no possible way Grace deserves anything but our sympathy. A lot of us are here, we just aren’t prefacing our statements with our race.

And FWIW I have had this done to me by men of every racial stripe. The commonality here is men.
posted by corb at 5:43 AM on January 18, 2018 [27 favorites]

Self identified WOC here.

I'm surprised by how obsessed I still am with this story. Clearly it's resonated with so many of us simply because of how common Grace's predicament is -- and how destabilizing and upsetting an encounter like the one she had with AA can be. Obviously, every woman reading about this projects our own experiences and emotions and sexual history onto the narrative.

I think almost everyone agrees Ansari's behavior, as narrated from Grace's anonymous perspective, was both very bad and very common. For me there are two main takeaways, regardless of whether you think what he did was "assault": 1) Men need to stop behaving like animals and pressuring women into sex and 2) Women need to be able to have frank conversations about how we both deal with and move forward from these experiences.

The moving forward bit is where some women starkly disagree about the value of the "personal responsibility" conversation. I think everyone can understand why a young woman with relatively little life experience would feel relatively powerless in this interaction even if Ansari was not a celebrity. This is why, obviously, a lot of men in their 30s, 40s and 50s like to date younger women -- they are less knowledgeable, less assertive and less likely to be able to articulate what they want and do not want. This is also why, I think, women tend to have less of these experiences as we age. Not only because men don't see older women romantic partners out as aggressively as they pursue younger women -- but also because women typically become more comfortable exercising our agency as the years go by.

For me, the reason I keep coming back to agency isn't because I'm internally oppressed by The Patriarchy or because I support rape culture or because I think men have any excuses for coercing women (they don't) -- and certainly not because I lack empathy for the reduced sense of agency Grace obviously felt. I keep coming back to decisions and choices and the process of learning to step into our power because every woman who experiences a demoralizing and violating encounter like this has to decide "What the hell do I do know?". Unfortunately, I think what tends to happen is that it takes a bunch of experiences like the one Grace narrated for many of us to finally say "Wow, I'm never fucking doing this again. I'm never putting myself in this situation again. I'm never allowing myself to be verbally coerced again. I'm never going home with a douchebag again." and so on..

And yes of course women are socialized to not speak up. And some women get attacked and killed for speaking up. And yet and still, women have to learn how to say no and speak up, especially in the context of a mutually-agreed upon date. In a romantic encounter, we *are* able to learn how to exercise our agency to express our preferences, draw boundaries and make decisions that don't result in us going home with a guy we just met and being surprised and confused that he wants to rip our clothes off and treat us like an object. When you experience this enough times, you begin to connect the dots.

I think it is entirely possible to condemn AA's behavior as anything ranging from assault to coercive pressuring and still consider what you would do differently the next time around if you were in Grace's shoes. Because most of us have been in her shoes and there's a shit ton she could do in the future to reduce the likelihood of this particular kind of traumatic experience happening again.

Personally speaking, when I finally had enough encounters like this, I was pushed to a breaking point of making different kinds of decisions about how to approach sex and dating. I started to re-think the wisdom of going home with someone I just met. I started to realize that I was not interested in casual encounters -- and that it's a hell of a lot easier to talk about sex and boundaries and desire with people you've had multiple conversations with, as opposed to a stranger you met a few hours before.

I say all of this knowing that even in the best case scenarios, shit happens and assault can occur even when you go out of your way to make All The Right Choices. I'm not displacing the blame or suggesting that men (and other perpetrators) are off the hook here. What I'm saying is that as great as #MeToo is, the reality is that men are not going to magically change any time soon and in the mean time, women have to be able to frankly discuss how we can minimize our exposure to harmful, oppressive sexual behavior, how we can weed out assholes like Aziz Ansari and how we can try to increase the likelihood of having sexual encounters with people who treat us with respect. And I'm sorry to say (because this seems to be a very unpopular take) -- it really does begin with learning how to respect ourselves.
posted by Gray Skies at 6:54 AM on January 18, 2018 [8 favorites]

Because most of us have been in her shoes and there's a shit ton she could do in the future to reduce the likelihood of this particular kind of traumatic experience happening again.

Absolutely, but how we frame that conversation makes a huge difference.

There's the judgmental, victim-blaming way to frame it that a lot of people are doing and that can be very upsetting and triggering to people who've been Grace: Why didn't she just. She could have just. I would have just. I would believe her if she'd just. And sure, that message teaches young women to protect themselves but in an ugly, sexist , guilt-internalizing way.

What we need to say: You are allowed to say no. You don't have to say yes. Your feelings matter. Your wants matter. Your needs matter. You are just as important as he is. You don't have to make him happy. You are allowed to make yourself happy.

We keep trying to make women feel guilty for not protecting themselves. We need to tell them they don't have to feel guilty if they do protect themselves.

(And sometimes "protecting yourself" means going along with what's happening in the moment to avoid even more pressing physical danger, and you shouldn't feel guilty for that choice, either)
posted by the turtle's teeth at 7:23 AM on January 18, 2018 [29 favorites]

Maybe it's because only one sexual assault experienced by people I care about (including myself) has ever been successfully prosecuted, but I'm utterly unconcerned with categorizing this into a binary is/is-not. Ideally, sex should make everyone involved better, if only for a brief moment. Ansari failed that ethical test.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 7:29 AM on January 18, 2018 [9 favorites]

If it turns out the young woman in this encounter was a young white woman, I will have far less pity for her with respect to the "lack of agency". Historically speaking, white people have raped and genocided the Indians in their colonial lands for enough centuries now, that to say to me she didn't have the personal agency to say, "No, you're really not hearing me. I don't want to have sex. Let's call it a night" is crap. This, in the land where it is socially acceptable for young white girls to wear slut-slutty yoga pants to work, keep a copy of the "Karma Sutra" by their nightstand, and "go Indian" when drunk while also considering themselves to be more "civilized" than any native, black or brown person around them (come north of the border, where "Dirty F**king Indians" and *f**king dirty indians* are Definitely. Things.).

I'm an Indian woman as well and I have to say, you argument doesn't seem coherent to me. I don't understand how whether or not this is assault depends on the race of the woman it happened to, nor how Indian people "being raped and genocided in their colonial lands" factors into anything. Also, it's not cool to refer to women as wearing "slut-slutty yoga pants."
posted by armadillo1224 at 7:33 AM on January 18, 2018 [38 favorites]

human ecologist: If it turns out the young woman in this encounter was a young white woman, I will have far less pity for her with respect to the "lack of agency".

schadenfrau: This is shockingly misogynist, and in line with every other hot take where you get to say shockingly misogynist things as long as you add the qualifier “white women.”

I think it's worth pointing out, schadenfrau, that you completely ignored the relevant historical context that human ecologist invoked immediately after the sentence you lifted out of context -- then reduced their analysis to "anger", which is, by the way, what whites and even some people of color often do when WOC critique the historical, social and political dynamics of white racism and sexual violence.
posted by Gray Skies at 7:33 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

As a woman of color (of the very same race as Aziz, at that!), I'm still deeply confused as to how the historical context really has any bearing on this particular encounter.
posted by armadillo1224 at 7:35 AM on January 18, 2018 [9 favorites]

Sorry, I think that I wrote that comment in a bit of a knee-jerk way. I think seeing so many white people (like Caitlin Flanagan in that atrocious Atlantic article) invent a racial angle for this story has made me defensive. Aziz Ansari has been a pretty important entertainment figure in my life and having him in the media, as an example of a sexually attractive, normal, assimilated but still not completely whitewashed brown guy has been emotionally important. I am very familiar with the fact that South Asian men are often emasculated in Western media or, if they are Muslim, portrayed as sexual threats.

I just don't see any of that happening here. I think the fact that this dynamic often exists with how South Asian men are presented in the media has been opportunistically used by many white writers and media critics (like Caitlin Flanagan) to distract from the consent issues and gendered power dynamic. I did not relate at all to Aziz in this situation, despite being a brown person. I've been in this situation a million times, as a decidedly not white woman and though I don't consider those experiences assault, 'Grace' was the person I related to here. I don't feel defensive, on behalf of my male South Asian friends and family members because I know how thoroughly capable they are of this kind of shit, just as much as any white guy is.

Also, I still like Aziz Ansari. He's still important to me. But I never really expected any better from him or any man. The behavior described in this article is not something I think of as sexual assault, just one of the minor, gross violations of agency that is just kind of inherent to being a woman having sex with men.
posted by armadillo1224 at 7:44 AM on January 18, 2018 [8 favorites]

Agree with others that it's not okay to slut shame women of any background .. while also agreeing that historical context is relevant.

It certainly matters that despite how rampant and common AA's terrible behavior was, it's a brown Muslim man being collectively vilified right now. Honestly, this would matter regardless of the accuser's background, particularly because the only reason this is news is because a website sought the woman out. There was a profit logic to this, driven by a media organization that as far as I know is not run by people of color. That logic is not surgically removed from the broader context of a society that has demonized the sexuality of people of color for centuries and elevated white women as (sexually) pure beings and The Ultimate Victims vis a vis people of color (and especially men of color).

I think it is possible to acknowledge this context while also feeling empathy for Grace, whatever her race may be. But I also think it's important to raise the matter of white women's reduced sense of agency despite their active role in maintaining a system of racial domination from which they directly benefit.
posted by Gray Skies at 7:48 AM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

I think it's worth pointing out, schadenfrau, that you completely ignored the relevant historical
context

Because it wasn’t white women doing all of that colonial raping. And no, I don’t see how that is relevant, at all, to how this was experienced by a 23 year old maybe white woman who was assaulted by a man of color in 2017.

Like, are you fucking kidding me? The fact that other white people, mostly white men (and some white women! Who’s position in any of this was complicated by their own oppression), victimized the shit out of people of color all over the world, somehow makes this assault...less?

What the actual fuck? How do you not see how incredibly misogynist this is? I get that Ansari has been a beacon of hope for a lot of people of color who have never seen themselves represented on screen before, but he can be that and be a goddamn predator at the same time.

Seriously, you would victimize this woman again in the event that she’s white?
posted by schadenfrau at 7:56 AM on January 18, 2018 [15 favorites]

Honestly, this is such an intersectional fail, I don’t even know where to start. The wheels start to come off when people react to the interactions of men of color and white women, and I don’t think that’s an accident. I think that’s where these things become really difficult, because there are contexts within which white women will wield more power than men of color, and there are contexts within which men of color will wield more power than white women, and sometimes which context is which will be ambiguous.

But two of them, alone, in a room, where one of them is coercing the other into sex, is not all that damn ambiguous.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:00 AM on January 18, 2018 [15 favorites]

Grace is 23. Aziz Ansari is 34, household-name famous, and was estimated to have a net worth of $17 million in 2015. The argument that the history of colonialism granted them equal agency that evening is really not a strong one.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 8:02 AM on January 18, 2018 [21 favorites]

Finally, because I forgot to respond to it, and then I’ll leave it alone so as not to choke the thread:

Caitlin Flanagan, like Katie Roiphe, has made a career out of being a “contrarian” shill for white male supremacy and patriarchy. Taking her as representative is...I mean, she’s not, which is why she’s in the “contrarian” niche, and also fuck that. She is garbage, and has been garbage for a long time, and plenty of white women have been saying so for as long as she’s been garbage.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:04 AM on January 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

Because it wasn’t white women doing all of that colonial raping.

Since you brought up the matter of anger, I think you might want to take a step back and consider your own. Because it's entirely possible that your anger is preventing you from acknowledging the complicity of white women in sexual and racialized violence against people of color.

It wasn't that long ago that white women enthusiastically joined lynch mobs and snapped pictures posing with the mutilated corpses of black men who were hanged and burned alive on the basis of fabricated claims of rape by white women. It wasn't very long ago that white women made a sport of lying about consensual encounters because they were too ashamed to admit to themselves or anyone else that they actually desired sex with a man of color. It wasn't very long ago that the only people speaking up about the complicity of white women in "all that colonial raping" were women of color. In fact, we are usually the only people speaking up about this today.

Seriously, you would victimize this woman again in the event that she’s white?

No one upthread said anything approaching this. Odd that you would draw such a bizarre inference.
posted by Gray Skies at 8:05 AM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

I did not relate at all to Aziz in this situation, despite being a brown person. I've been in this situation a million times, as a decidedly not white woman and though I don't consider those experiences assault, 'Grace' was the person I related to here. I don't feel defensive, on behalf of my male South Asian friends and family members because I know how thoroughly capable they are of this kind of shit, just as much as any white guy is.

Just chiming in my agreement with this sentiment. And I'm coming at it from a Muslim angle too. So in my case, what's playing in my mind is also the phenomenon of 'wallahbros'. You don't need to be white to be a man. Just in terms of famous Western Muslim men and the women who unfortunately were preyed on by them, last year was the year of Tariq Ramadan and Nouman Ali Khan, except yes, I will admit, applying the intersectional lens here, their cases barely made any commentary even here in the blue because they kept it 'in house'. 'Luckily' enough as a southeast asian muslim in the west, i'm 'chinese' enough to be preyed on from more than one exotic angle. it's great. and when I come back to my home country, I still get the same shit.
posted by cendawanita at 8:05 AM on January 18, 2018 [10 favorites]

And if this datapoint is of any use, Grace's story is being discussed with great energy amongst my friends' network in Mumbai too.
posted by cendawanita at 8:07 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

> If this was not the case, it seems to me more self-identifying women of color would also be sharing their experiences in this thread.

Sorry, are you really asking women - women of color! - to prove their cred to you? So that you can...what, exactly?

> This, in the land where it is socially acceptable for young white girls to wear slut-slutty yoga pants to work

What even the fuck. Why would you do this.

If you want to take issue - and you clearly do, and I don't see anything wrong with that - with how this incident has been framed in the media (like the Atlantic article), then take issue with that framing, not with whether or not Grace might be white, or how colonialism means she has agency.
posted by rtha at 8:07 AM on January 18, 2018 [16 favorites]

No one upthread said anything approaching this.

"If it turns out the young woman in this encounter was a young white woman, I will have far less pity for her with respect to the "lack of agency"."
posted by XtinaS at 8:08 AM on January 18, 2018 [9 favorites]

XtinaS, I can't speak to what human ecologist meant to convey, but I am baffled as to how that quote implies that she would "victimize this woman again".
posted by Gray Skies at 8:11 AM on January 18, 2018

No one upthread said anything approaching this. Odd that you would draw such a bizarre inference

This was EXACTLY what was said. It was grossly misogynist, and the only justification for it was if she were white. It’s not an inference, but an actual textual fact.

I do agree that the sentiment itself is “bizarre,” though perhaps not in the way you meant.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:13 AM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

baffled as to how that quote implies that she would "victimize this woman again".

Gaslighting women who have been assaulted by telling them it was their fault for not exercising their “agency” is one of the most common ways that women are victimized again. It is often reported to be as traumatizing as the assault itself. If you are not familiar with this topic, maybe read up on it.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:15 AM on January 18, 2018 [17 favorites]

Grey Skies, try this on:

"If it turns out the young woman in this encounter was wearing slutty yoga pants , I will have far less pity for her with respect to the "lack of agency"."
posted by CheapB at 8:15 AM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

Gaslighting women..

Gaslighting also occurs when people (especially but not only white people) tell people of color that the racial context is irrelevant, that history no longer matters and that colonialism is some long lost thing of the past. You might want to read up on that, too..
posted by Gray Skies at 8:19 AM on January 18, 2018 [5 favorites]

Gaslighting also occurs when people (especially but not only white people) tell people of color that the racial context is irrelevant

Your argument is that if she is white, the assault is somehow less, because it was perpetrated by a man of color.

This is the most twisted application I have ever seen of “intersectionality,” and it is victimizing to any white woman who has been assaulted by men of color. Congratulations. Good job. You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:28 AM on January 18, 2018 [8 favorites]

Try this for size: dismay and dislike over how, once again, white supremacy, centres any discussion that has the closest resonance to the experience of the majority community, cannot be used as a cudgel to abuse, through dismissive language, the specific individual abused in the narrative

I'm not defending extending "less empathy" for Grace based on her background, but I am defending the legitimacy of human ecology's invoking the historical, colonial and racial context in the conversation about white women's sense of reduced agency. I also find it interesting that human ecology's point about their own sense of empathy (which may be a terrible failing on their part but at least has the value of being honest) is being framed as abusive in the context of a society that has thoroughly normalized not giving any shit whatsoever about women of color as a matter of course. And I don't see any white people on this thread admitting that if Grace were a woman of color, they would also care less. Because unfortunately, that's what decades of social psychological research would indicate to be true -- not to mention women of color's everyday experiences. But as expected, this is a conversation that most white people, and especially white women, don't want to have.

Your argument is that if she is white, the assault is somehow less, because it was perpetrated by a man of color.

No, that's the bizarre interpretation that you invented and imposed in your swift and angry refusal to actually ask human ecology what she meant and consider whatever the answer might be.

I'll also take this opportunity to remind you that in my initial post upthread, there's a whole lot of empathy that you're deliberately ignoring.
posted by Gray Skies at 8:39 AM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

I also find it interesting that human ecology's point about their own sense of empathy (which may be a terrible failing on their part but at least has the value of being honest) is being framed as abusive in the context of a society that has thoroughly normalized not giving any shit whatsoever about women of color as a matter of course. And I don't see any white people on this thread admitting that if Grace were a woman of color, they would also care less. Because unfortunately, that's what decades of social psychological research would indicate to be true -- not to mention women of color's everyday experiences.

I can definitely agree with all of the sociological points made, except what's sticking in my mind are 2 things: 1) we in fact do not know Grace's ethnicity, so yes there's a defaulting-to-whiteness, but the vagueness remains, and then what happens when she reveals her background and it's not white? it's one thing to problematize the text, as it were, it's quite another when in the course of being rightly cautious you end up contributing to the misogyny; and 2) i recognise and agree with your description of human ecology's point. but to my own POC ears it also sounds like hearing from older and other women who've been commenting about how 'she should know better' and 'why won't she assert herself more'. I guess that's what stops me from even trying to defend human ecology's conclusion. Like I don't get abused by the same POC men, and my only tragedy is not being white enough for people to care. Well, I'm glad ppl want to talk about it, even if at the moment it feels 'race-blind', because I needed this yet another round of testimonies and articles so I can virtually shove them in the faces of my fellow POC men who absolutely have no idea what Aziz Ansari did wrong.
posted by cendawanita at 8:56 AM on January 18, 2018 [10 favorites]

One comment removed, we're into a pretty extended end-game state of "we agree about everything except for the parts we don't agree about" here, about second-hand parsing of someone not actually in that conversation's previous comments, and I don't think that's gonna get anywhere further at this point without ending up adding more heat than light, so let's let that drop now.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:13 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

However, I'm not sure why that's falling along generational lines as clearly as it is.

My guess would be this is millennial bashing bleeding into people's interpretation. If you already think millennials are "entitled babies", then why wouldn't this idea extend into the dating and sex?
posted by FJT at 9:15 AM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

Yes, that makes sense. I've heard that this account somehow "infantalizes" Grace and that would seem to play right into that.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:21 AM on January 18, 2018

Is the issue the sense that if he had not been a POC, that Grace would not have felt emboldened to share her story? And that a media outlet would not have felt they had carte blanche to publish it? There could be a kernal of truth to that. Which has not much to do with the facts of the night, such as we know them.

It brings to mind Emmett Till. This idea that women are to be believed and listened to and taken seriously only when injustice or criminality has been committed by a POC. I wonder at all the injustice and criminality that Carolyn Bryant may have suffered in due course of her existence as a woman in our culture. And how the notion that any kind of justice might come to her even if unfairly and far more swiftly and horribly than she imagined or intended. It might have come as a huge surprise to her given what she had seen, and known, and learned about her place in the world that all of a sudden, people would stand up for her. The question is, why was justice so swift and horrible in that case? Because Till was black and she was white and white men wanted to commit "justice."

And just today, I read how Nassar (the USAG "doctor" and serial child sexual abuser) was fired from MSU alongside two other women. No one else in the group of people that should have suffered consequences was fired. And my first thought was, "Oh sure, justice comes swiftly to women standing near corrupt men." One of them was an assistant who was fired for doing something with his records at his orders. Clearly a wrong thing, right? I shouldn't be feeling any kind of pity for her or irritation at justice here, but I kind of do. Because there are other men in the room who are equally transgressive and justice just does not seem to be coming as swifty or surely for them. And then I think, what a bad thing to think.

On the radio this morning, some female elected official was getting the take-down on things she had been doing incorrectly in her office which also apparently had a policy against bullying and she was afoul of it (among other things). And I had the cynical thought, "A bullying policy? How progressive! It's a good thing we found a woman to exercise it on." Also, she's a woman of color. So, yeah, of course we find the sword of justice swiftly and clear-eyed when it comes to women and POC.

I have a feeling though that this kind of intersectional deep-dive doesn't do much for the conversation we are having here about men's behavior in general. And whether women have a right to be treated well behind closed doors in intimate settings.
posted by amanda at 9:21 AM on January 18, 2018 [10 favorites]

There's the judgmental, victim-blaming way to frame it that a lot of people are doing and that can be very upsetting and triggering to people who've been Grace: Why didn't she just. She could have just. I would have just. I would believe her if she'd just. And sure, that message teaches young women to protect themselves but in an ugly, sexist , guilt-internalizing way.

My guess would be this is millennial bashing bleeding into people's interpretation. If you already think millennials are "entitled babies", then why wouldn't this idea extend into the dating and sex?

I've heard that this account somehow "infantalizes" Grace and that would seem to play right into that.

I agree that the framing of how women talk about decision making matters, and that there's a way to do it that does not involve guilt-tripping and sexist cruelty. But I also suspect that the "judgmental" tone of some women's responses to this situation have to do with the infantilizing way the narrative was framed, and the amateurish quality of the "journalism", writing and editing that went into the Babe story. I think Jill Filipovic did a nice job of speaking to this -- and the gross failure of Babe dot com's adherence to anything approaching professional standards.

There's also the fact that some people do not want to have a conversation about agency and empowerment, no matter how it's framed and no matter how much empathy is expressed.
posted by Gray Skies at 9:30 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I think it would be neat to live in a society where shaming someone for his behavior is OK. I'd also like to live somewhere where telling someone that they dun fucked up without publicly shaming them is a lot easier.

I don't know if the mechanism should involve always calling it assault or never calling it assault or what, but I am sure that reducing this kind of trauma is a worthwhile aim.

I've had some encounters with men and women that left me shaky and sad. I have also had encounters where I traumatized someone else. Never was it anywhere near this scope and scale, but I really appreciate the men and women who let me know in one way or another, and I wish I'd communicated better to those who left me with yet another knot in my stomach.

I'm sure I'll never fully understand what either of them experienced here, but I think I can work to reduce this kind of horror nonetheless.
posted by poe at 9:34 AM on January 18, 2018

It brings to mind Emmett Till. This idea that women are to be believed and listened to and taken seriously only when injustice or criminality has been committed by a POC.

Yeah, I was thinking that the people who come out of the woodwork to be rapist apologists and tell us "He's such a good kid with such a bright future" are almost always advocating for upper and middle class white boys to get off unpunished. The laughably named justice system doesn't work that way for men of color accused of offending white women.

It seems like older white people who comment to the media, especially men, care about controlling access to white women more than they care about women.
posted by puddledork at 9:40 AM on January 18, 2018 [11 favorites]

It brings to mind Emmett Till. This idea that women are to be believed and listened to and taken seriously only when injustice or criminality has been committed by a POC. I wonder at all the injustice and criminality that Carolyn Bryant may have suffered in due course of her existence as a woman in our culture. And how the notion that any kind of justice might come to her even if unfairly and far more swiftly and horribly than she imagined or intended

Emmett Till was a fourteen year old boy who did nothing wrong. His only “offense” was, by Brant’s own account, years later, being insufficiently deferential to a racist white woman, in her racist opinion, a white woman who then lashed out at him by harnessing all the brutal power of racist patriarchy at her particular disposal. That this power was less than a man would wield seems irrelevant, because it was still enough for a crime against humanity. Whether she intended for him to die is...I mean, I don’t care, because she would have known it was a possibility. She would have known that, at the very least, he would be terrorized and in genuine fear of his life. Even if she didn’t expect to be believed, in the sense that we understand believing someone’s account of their own experience, she would have known that white men wouldn’t tolerate even the appearance of a black male — a fourteen year old child — “offending,” in any shape or form, their white female property. She called in the air raid, and it doesn’t matter that she couldn’t be sure of what kind of ordinance they would drop. And she may, in fact, have intended exactly what happened.

Of all of the examples of white women calling down the power of white supremacist patriarchy, this is one of the most unambiguously evil. Truly, truly evil.

And IMO the reason vitriol against white women is so widespread, and such an attractive and frequent channel for undercover misogyny, is because sometimes white women did truly evil shit like this. That Brant’s position in a white supremacist patriarchy wasn’t unfettered does not excuse her particular actions — she wasn’t in fear of her life, she didn’t think she would be beaten or raped by her white husband unless she claimed offense, she was just mad because a black boy wasn’t sufficiently deferential to her. I’m sure there were other situations where white women were afraid and did terrible things because of that fear, but this...this is not one of them. Just as I’m sure there were many many more situations where white women took out their frustrations and pain at being subject to male power on the only people they could reliably wield power over — people of color, and specifically black people.

But what Brant did to Till was just evil. Maybe not as evil as the men who actually murdered him, but evil just the same.

This...does not call to mind Emmett Till, for me. For many, many reasons, starting with Emmett Till didn’t do a goddamn thing other than be black and be a boy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Ansari, otoh, coerced and sexually assaulted a woman, and there’s as much corroborating evidence as you can get for the victim’s account without actual video.

Please do not compare Emmett Till to Aziz Ansari, even implicitly.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:57 AM on January 18, 2018 [36 favorites]

"Why is a man of color being publicly vilified for something men of all backgrounds do on a daily and nightly basis?"

Should he not be?

Should he not be, because he's a POC?

Should he not be, until all non-racialized men are vilified first?
posted by CheapB at 9:58 AM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

For the record, I totally agree with you, Gray Skies. Bryant knowingly made the lie and complicit racists took it as an opportunity to carry out a murder fantasy in the name of "justice." It's abhorrent top to bottom and it still goes on today.

I don't think the voice of women of color is irrelevant. I just don't see how we tease apart the bias from the story that is in front of us and get anywhere with it, today, on Metafilter. Like a lot of pernicious racist and misogynist cultural bedrock, there's plausible deniability for days.

I mean, it's beyond cynical for me to suggest that those women with Nassar didn't deserve to lose their jobs. Of course they did. As did any other men and women (and there were a lot of women) who ignored clear signs of abuse, reporting of abuse, and more. But there's a dark part of me that thinks there is a little less than true justice when it comes for them. But, I'm wrong. I'm wrong about that. And trying to argue the point in the face of clear criminality and wrongdoing and injustice is a bad idea.
posted by amanda at 10:00 AM on January 18, 2018

Is the issue the sense that if he had not been a POC, that Grace would not have felt emboldened to share her story? And that a media outlet would not have felt they had carte blanche to publish it? There could be a kernal of truth to that.

Could be. It's worth thinking about. But I think the recent Eliza Dushku story counters that somewhat. Although, Eliza Dushku is a celebrity and Grace is not, and molesting young teen is different than being a boundary-bulldozing, pushy selfish jerk with a younger, but adult, date.

I don't think there's anything wrong with looking at the story through intersectional viewpoints - race, class, age, gender. I don't think Grace's race would change my belief in her experience but there's nothing wrong with turning these experiences over from a number of prisms of discrimination or disadvantage.
posted by Squeak Attack at 10:03 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm trying to get at why intersectionality has been brought up. What is the kernal behind the assertion that if Ansari wasn't POC, we wouldn't be hearing about this. And I think we have many, many clear cases where POC are held to a standard that doesn't exist for white men.

But on the third, fourth, or fifth hand, does that then override the ability to have a discussion about what sexual coercion is and whether it's an endemic problem that can be solved?
posted by amanda at 10:06 AM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

I think it is possible to say "Hey, it's a good thing for us to have a public conversation about the gray area of sexual coercion" while also asking "Why is a man of color being publicly vilified for something men of all backgrounds do on a daily and nightly basis?"

1. This is not a gray area. Many women are struggling over this because it describes their own experiences and that means some heavy fucking work, but many women also read this account and went “this was what my rape was like.” Please do not both sides gray area this.

2. Because he deserves to be. Because he set himself up as a woke feminist darling who was also an expert on modern dating while treating women like things that he could use and abuse, rather than people. Because he has almost certainly done this before, and the odds that he is someone’s rapist — whether or not Grace chooses to describe him that way — are really fucking high. The solution to unequal privilege is not to give men of color a pass, it’s to also go after white men. You don’t delay justice until it can be perfect, otherwise you never get it.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:10 AM on January 18, 2018 [19 favorites]

> The group of women in their 20s and 30s (where I fall) think this encounter was clearly not consensual and the group of women in their 40s and 50s think this was a really bad sexual encounter, but that she consented to it.

Given the age difference, is it possible that this is why Aziz considered the encounter consensual?
posted by goddess_eris at 10:16 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm a bit sick at the turn this discussion has taken.

Asking why Ansari is being vilified for something white men get away with, to me, has shades of Peter Liang. No one should get away with this behavior, period. But we live in a sick society and we're at the very beginning of this moment where people are starting to take it seriously. I am personally okay with taking down whoever we can reach.

But I hate to say that. I hate to be the person of color who says it's not about race, in a room where people are invoking Emmett Till (??!?!?!?!).

I have been asked to stand behind and support the bad behavior of men of my race, because they have it hard, because they face discrimination, because they are desexualized in American media. I have always refused to do so. But I hate to air that in a white community, where people might look at me and say "See, those men really ARE bad, they really are like that, even sunset in snow country, the Asian American social justice warrior, says so."

I ask you all to not put me in that position, please. Don't imply that Ansari deserves a pass because white men get away with worse, and don't shrug off the effects of racism when you rightly condemn him.
posted by sunset in snow country at 10:16 AM on January 18, 2018 [49 favorites]

I'm beginning to think that because what happened with Grace is such a normal thing, that there should be less emphasis on Ansari's celebrity. It seems to give others an excuse that, "Oh well, I'm not a celebrity, so I'll never be in that position", when the takeaway should be that this is very common and that you can easily be in that position .
posted by FJT at 10:17 AM on January 18, 2018 [5 favorites]

And trying to argue the point in the face of clear criminality and wrongdoing and injustice is a bad idea.

But what Aziz Ansari did is not a case of "clear criminality". It was terrible behavior -- the gray area of non-criminal coercion that almost every man has engaged in. What bothers me, from an intersectional perspective, is that as much as women are saying "ALL MEN DO THIS!!!" the only man actually being identified and vilified for it just happens to be a Muslim man of color. The fact that a non-white Muslim is being criminalized in the court of public opinion for behavior that is so widespread and commonplace that "criminalizing" it would require placing most men on the planet in prison at the very same time that the president of the United States is a white supremacist who vilifies Muslims and has bragged about sexual assault is a fucking problem. Because this widespread and biased vilification has consequences for how other men of color are viewed and stigmatized -- and how white men will continue to be morally elevated in a system that requires their widespread and commonplace sexual violence to take place without consequence while men of color are disproportionately criminalized (both symbolically and literally).

I hear some WOC saying "Well, if this gets people talking about the shit men of all backgrounds do to us, sobeit" and I guess I can empathize. But there is something really strange about ignoring racial bias in the reporting of this matter and acting as though it doesn't matter because the lives of Women writ large will improve. I keep coming back to "both/and". We don't have to choose which axis of oppression matters.
posted by Gray Skies at 10:19 AM on January 18, 2018 [5 favorites]

I've been thinking about it, and the one way that race intersected with this in my head most definitely was a) defaulting Aziz into "whiteness" (my bad, I won't do that again) and b) NOT taking into account how race intersects here.

I think it is kind of gross to not specifically address that Aziz is a muslim person of color when we frame this as an #allmen kind of problem.

One one hand saying "all you dudes are apt to behave this way, y'all need to check your shit" is NOT singling out Aziz but at the same time it does feel colorblind and I'm duly noting it.

I don't know the best way to say "Hey, this is something dudes do, Aziz Ansari did it, and instead of piling on him as if he's the only one who deserves social scorn, maybe we should more rigorously examine colonial masculinity and how that shit is really fucking it up for everyone" Maybe that's the best way to say it I dunno.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:42 AM on January 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

women are in long marriages where sex has never been anything other than coercion

I am waiting for this conversation to delve into marriage and marital expectations more broadly
posted by Dressed to Kill at 11:05 AM on January 18, 2018 [8 favorites]

Given the age difference, is it possible that this is why Aziz considered the encounter consensual?

Because he has early hearing loss and couldn't hear her say no multiple times? No, Aziz is not a dinosaur from a different time. He was born in 1984 and wrote this book. He didn't oopsie into shoving past her consent and back teeth. The age difference is part of victim selection.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 11:05 AM on January 18, 2018 [14 favorites]

Not having casual encounters won't stop women from suffering this behavior. Some, many?, women are in long marriages where sex has never been anything other than coercion. Limiting the conversation to douchebags on first dates does a disservice to how many men find this behavior acceptable.

You act as though the rest of that paragraph didn't explicitly mention the agency women have in weeding out disrespectful assholes, using the dating process to discuss consent and assertively deciding to only have sex with romantic partners who respect us as human beings.

These are choices that women can and do make.
posted by Gray Skies at 11:07 AM on January 18, 2018

Not having casual encounters won't stop women from suffering this behavior. Some, many?, women are in long marriages where sex has never been anything other than coercion. Limiting the conversation to douchebags on first dates does a disservice to how many men find this behavior acceptable.

Yeah one of the fb arguments I had featured a woman saying something like "if we can say 'no' after a night of bad foreplay then half of all marriages must feature sexual assault" and I still have not recovered from hearing that it is so SAD that she has experiences which make her feel like this is how it's gotta be.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:09 AM on January 18, 2018 [9 favorites]

while also asking "Why is a man of color being publicly vilified for something men of all backgrounds do on a daily and nightly basis?"

If you think we aren’t coming for them, for men of all backgrounds, then you aren’t paying attention. They certainly are, and find it highly useful when you carry their water for them.

This story is the first documented account. It is the first account where the receipts were present, where she texted immediately afterward to say she found it fucked up, where it was against a man in the entertainment industry. It is the start, not the end. And it is fucked up that she needed those receipts and that even with them, people are insisting we not care somehow until the victim is more politically convenient.

Fuck that. The time is now. We are tired of asshole’s success resting on the broken bodies and self-esteem of half of the goddamned population. We are coming for them ALL.
posted by corb at 11:12 AM on January 18, 2018 [27 favorites]

Feel free to find my comment up thread where I discuss my husband as the only man I've been in a relationship with that hasn't done this. Women in these threads are making choices, do make choices, you aren't the only one to think of it.

But if we don't tell women this type of sex isn't ok, that it is coercion up to assault, that they can demand better, that saying no is enough, that saying no multiple times is enough, then how will they know to weed these guys out? So many people have said this describes a consensual encounter she felt badly about. Lets say she, or any of the other women reading these discussions, takes that to heart, where is her agency if she doesn't know she doesn't have to put up with this just because she wants to love men? Do you have anything to say to women who have been married for 20 or more years who have only ever had sex where either they gave in or it was fought out of them? Do you want to lecture them on personal responsibility?
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 11:13 AM on January 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

And yes of course women are socialized to not speak up. And some women get attacked and killed for speaking up. And yet and still, women have to learn how to say no and speak up, especially in the context of a mutually-agreed upon date.

I mostly agree with this. At the same time this framing reminds me of how the to-do lists for women of popular wisdom on How To Not Get Kidnapped/Raped/Murdered always have an instruction that if someone (a man) holding a gun on you tries to force you into a car, you must scream/fight/run/throw yourself on the ground/do anything to refuse to getting into the car, because it’s better to be shot than to give your kidnapper the opportunity to take you to a second location.

Whether women are dealing with an armed assailant or a guy on a date turning ugly, these risks are our only options. Speak up and maybe get hurt/killed, or don’t speak up and maybe get hurt/killed worse. To speak up requires a woman to not only push through fear but also to be willing to get hurt if necessary to avoid larger pain. That’s terrifying.
posted by nicebookrack at 11:17 AM on January 18, 2018 [12 favorites]

But if we don't tell women this type of sex isn't ok, that it is coercion up to assault, that they can demand better, that saying no is enough, that saying no multiple times is enough, then how will they know to weed these guys out?

I'm not sure why you are asking me this, when I've already clearly stated that the man's behavior was wrong and this kind of sex is not okay. As to weeding guys out -- Isn't it rather obvious that women need to have actual (and undoubtedly uncomfortable) conversations about sex, boundaries and consent with romantic prospects prior to finding themselves in ambiguous sexual situations with strangers?

As for the millions of women married to men who don't respect their humanity -- I think women have the capacity to evaluate their own lives and ask "Hmm, what am I going to do about this shitty/abusive relationship I'm in?" Some of them post their predicaments here and some of us weigh in.

My point is that it is not only possible but also necessary for women to make romantic decisions that reduce the likelihood of ending up in a situation like the one describe in Babe. If that's "lecturing", even when prefaced by lots of "Wow I've been there and I empathize", sobeit.
posted by Gray Skies at 11:25 AM on January 18, 2018

now more than ever i am wholly uninterested in hot takes that feel the need to remind women that the shitty things men do to them could have been avoided if only they'd been better somehow
posted by poffin boffin at 11:33 AM on January 18, 2018 [68 favorites]

It is both possible and necessary for women to make these decisions, but especially if they're already in a precarious position or with someone they don't know well enough to predict how they will react, it also can be dangerous and lead to mental calculations around "how bad is this situation going to be if I stay, and how bad could it get if I leave?"
posted by Flannery Culp at 11:34 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

I think harm reduction is a fine goal, but difficult to talk about when seas of survivors are told that their earliest abuses are their fault. As many caveats as we put in, culturally it still comes off as putting the weight on victims and giving an out to abusers, "well, she should have left." But I admit I've also read too many twitter responses involving phrases like "pull your big girl panties up and walk out" so I'm probably more triggered and on edge than normal.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 11:34 AM on January 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

My point is that it is not only possible but also necessary for women to make romantic decisions that reduce the likelihood of ending up in a situation like the one describe in Babe. If that's "lecturing",

It’s not “lecturing,” it’s rape culture. It’s rape culture to litigate what an assault victim could have, should have done differently to avoid being assaulted, rather than hold the assailant responsible for being a monster. Women should be able to live their lives without the constant burden of risk calculation; you are arguing the opposite. It is rape culture to put that onus on victims, rather than the perpetrators of violence, and it is nearly always gendered.

Exactly what should she have done differently? Never trusted a man at all? Never believed a man who said all the right things, who’s public image is of a woke feminist? Exactly how hypervigilant do you think we should all have to be? How small do we have to make our lives while men get to do whatever the fuck they want, comfortable in the assumption that, even when their misdeeds are made public, people like you will jump in to question the decisions of the women they’ve hurt?

You are perpetuating and enforcing rape culture right now, right here, in this thread.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:37 AM on January 18, 2018 [36 favorites]

("Possible" in the sense of "women are autonomous beings capable of taking action". Being able to get out of any particular situation without harm may or may not be possible.)
(crossposted, meant to respond to Gray Skies)
posted by Flannery Culp at 11:37 AM on January 18, 2018

I'm a white woman, and I was raped by a Peruvian man in Peru, and I didn't report it to the authorities. There were a lot of reasons I didn't report it, but one of them was because I decided the possible consequences for him, if everything was reported, outweighed the lived consequences for me, in part because I was a white woman and a foreigner and an American, and he was a Peruvian man and dark skinned and poor. Someone from the part of Peru where I was assaulted told me that it was patronizing of me to have had that reaction and that rather that act with compassion towards him and his family, in not reporting him I probably set up other young women - probably women from with far less agency than me, and far fewer people to listen to their story and take seriously - to be assaulted by this same man. This is something that has weighed on me just as much as any lingering effects of the actual asasault. But I'm still not sure what the best way for me to have handled the situation would have been.

I hate the mobilization of white womanhood to keep black and brown people subjugated. I hate that my sexuality has been weaponized by white supremacy, and I hate that accusations of threatening the purity of white women have been used to justify killing and beating and criminalizing and so on. I hate the history of rape and sexual violence as a tool for colonialism. I know that my assault is part of a very complex history of power and agency and all of these things, and I tried to keep all of that in mind when figuring out what to do with what had happened to me. But the fact that he was brown and I was white didn't make me any less assaulted, at the end of the day. For what it's worth, agency is complex and all my whiteness didn't make me any less afraid.
posted by ChuraChura at 11:39 AM on January 18, 2018 [52 favorites]

Whether women are dealing with an armed assailant or a guy on a date turning ugly, these risks are our only options. Speak up and maybe get hurt/killed, or don’t speak up and maybe get hurt/killed worse. To speak up requires a woman to not only push through fear but also to be willing to get hurt if necessary to avoid larger pain. That’s terrifying.

There's a third option, which is not fool proof but my God it exists: take some time to get to know someone and maybe even have a conversation (or multiple conversations!) about sex and expectations and and boundaries before you decide to go his place and you're on his kitchen counter and (his) hormones are raging and you have to decide how to extricate yourself from a potentially dangerous situation with someone you don't know.

Again, not to minimize the fact that sexual harm can come from people you know and so on and so forth. But the specific situation described in Babe was not "a bad marriage" or a stranger raping someone in an alley or a family member molesting someone. It was sexual contact on a first date between an older man and a younger, perhaps inexperienced, women who might not have considered the potential risks of going to a stranger's home after a first date.

I really want to insist that this is not victim blaming and it is not excusing Aziz and it is not crucifying the young woman for being young or inexperienced. Almost everyone woman has been there -- some of us much older than 23 years old -- but there is value in discussing how we (can and do) make choices to minimize the likelihood of this shit happening to us again.

The importance of proactive communication goes for both the women in these interactions, as well as the men, too. Because I really don't see how "THIS KIND OF SEX IS WRONG!!!!" gets translated into actual cultural change until/unless people talk about how to talk about sex with the actual people they might have sex with before having sex.

I guess what I'm saying is, there is abstract "cultural change that must happen" and then there is "What am I actually going to do/say about sex and consent with the next person I might want to get involved with?" ("or with the asshole I'm currently involved with", as the case may be)
posted by Gray Skies at 11:44 AM on January 18, 2018

I think there's a fundamental (perhaps willful) misunderstanding about what it means to say "we can infer from our past experiences that this particular kind of harm can be minimized in the future by doing XYZ" versus "you are responsible for the harm that happened to you in the past and responsible for the harm a perpetrator may inflict in the future". The latter is quite obviously supporting rape culture but the former is supporting women's capacity to learn from our traumatic experiences and make decisions that result in better sexual and romantic interactions and less violence in the context of patriarchy and rape culture.

I'm not sure why these two statements keep getting conflated in this thread, but they should be distinguished from each other, as they differ drastically in terms of their premise and conclusion.
posted by Gray Skies at 11:51 AM on January 18, 2018

I really want to insist that this is not victim blaming

And yet

But the specific situation described in Babe was not "a bad marriage" or a stranger raping someone in an alley or a family member molesting someone. It was sexual contact on a first date

SO FUCKING WHAT?

I mean, it’s pretty obvious to me why this matters to you, but it’s fascinating to me that you can’t even come up with an internally consistent rationale for why it matters to you. You just really need to find a reason to blame this woman for something Aziz Ansari did. It’s really that simple.

You are the problem.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:51 AM on January 18, 2018 [28 favorites]

He has a rock solid reputation as one of the wokest, most feminist baes. His entire career is based upon this "fact." He wrote an entire book about sex and relationships. There is no reason she should have guessed he would repeatedly ignore her saying no. More dates would have just shown more of his facade. More dates would have just made her feel more indebted.

This also is never about a man's hormones just being too strong to hear clearly.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 11:52 AM on January 18, 2018 [39 favorites]

I really want to insist that this is not victim blaming and it is not excusing Aziz and it is not crucifying the young woman for being young or inexperienced.

It is.
It is.
IT IS.
posted by threetwentytwo at 11:55 AM on January 18, 2018 [20 favorites]

"What am I actually going to do/say about sex and consent with the next person I might want to get involved with?"

she said NO

he did not care

why do you live in this fantasy world where if she'd asked him on that first date, or on any hypothetical future dates, "hey are you going to coerce me into sex later, or even just straight up violently rape me, just wondering" that he would have answered honestly with "yes, i will, you should not come home with me now or at any other time" thus allowing her to escape being blamed for his actions.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:56 AM on January 18, 2018 [44 favorites]

I had a conversation yesterday where a woman told me, pretty frankly, that she "doesn't want to be told that she's a victim of sexual assault." And I think that's the long and short of it for many women. They seem victimization as an attitude--if you are a victim, if you choose to see yourself as a victim, then you are weak, helpless, infantile, powerless. And so they feel angry at women who label similar instances of assault (which fit the dictionary definition of sexual assault!!!!) that way, because they feel it implies that they are weak, helpless, infantile, powerless.

I mean, this is a fair point. I know someone who was stabbed through the arm during a really violent mugging attack, but she was a total bad-ass and the whole reason she was stabbed in the first place was because she was trying to fight back. When she overheard someone later describe her as "the stabbing victim" she quietly pointed out that she actually didn't care for the word "victim" for precisely that reason. "Call me something like 'the stab-ee' instead, maybe," she said.

But this woman didn't deny that she was stabbed altogether. Similarly - it's possible to reject the "victim" part of things without denying assault ever happened. While I also believe that each woman has the final say on whether what happened to her can or cannot be called "assault", I think it's a mistake to deny you were assaulted just becuase you don't want to be perceived as a victim. If that's your only objection, call yourself a SURVIVOR of sexual assault.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:56 AM on January 18, 2018 [9 favorites]

He has a rock solid reputation as one of the wokest, most feminist baes.

Rock solid for whom? White people?

I can't be the only person on this thread who was already aware of scathing critiques of AA's feminist politics -- especially his portrayal of brown women in Master of None, which was and remains atrocious.
posted by Gray Skies at 11:57 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

There's a third option, which is not fool proof but my God it exists: take some time to get to know someone and maybe even have a conversation (or multiple conversations!) about sex and expectations and and boundaries before you decide to go his place and you're on his kitchen counter and (his) hormones are raging and you have to decide how to extricate yourself from a potentially dangerous situation with someone you don't know.

Rule 1 of finding yourself in a hole: stop digging.

This here - this is what rape culture looks like. The constant placing of responsibility on the woman's shoulders for not doing "enough" to avoid being raped.

I really want to insist that this is not victim blaming and it is not excusing Aziz and it is not crucifying the young woman for being young or inexperienced.

Insist all you want - it doesn't stop it from being victim blaming.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:57 AM on January 18, 2018 [29 favorites]

I really want to insist that this is not victim blaming and it is not excusing Aziz and it is not crucifying the young woman for being young or inexperienced.

What, precisely, would a Long Dinner and Conversation Beforehand have done? Do you think that's the fatal flaw for predators, asking them direct questions like they're undercover police on TV shows?

You insist that you're not victim-blaming. Too bad you're really wrong.
posted by XtinaS at 11:59 AM on January 18, 2018 [13 favorites]

No, you in fact aren't the only informed one in this thread. I've read those critiques too (and decided to not watch Master of None based on them). I've even heard rumors of him being a bad date going back a couple years and I'm a nobody in Arkansas who just happens to real a lot of Twitter and gossip press. But some critiques and think pieces don't actually change his broad well known reputation.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 12:02 PM on January 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

but there is value in discussing how we (can and do) make choices to minimize the likelihood of this shit happening to us again.

There is, but I absolutely don't think this is the teachable moment or that those choices should be discussed in the context of a particular woman's story.

I am involved with teaching self-defense to women and there is a way to have these discussions and this isn't it.

One rule that we have is that we use people's past experience for instructional purposes, never ever in a group setting and one-on-one only if a student comes to an instructor and specifically wants to examine that. It's unproductive for a wide variety of reasons.

There's a lot more to say but this isn't the place or time, but just wanted to point out that from a more or less professional perspective, discussing Grace's actions is not a way to arm women going forward.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:04 PM on January 18, 2018 [14 favorites]

He has a rock solid reputation as one of the wokest, most feminist baes.

Rock solid for whom? White people?

lol jesus christ
posted by schadenfrau at 12:06 PM on January 18, 2018 [9 favorites]

There are lots of men who like casual sex. There are lots of women who like casual sex. Men who enjoy casual sex aren't changing their behavior to avoid being assaulted. Why must women?
posted by ChuraChura at 12:06 PM on January 18, 2018 [23 favorites]

Couple more things removed. Gray Skies, you've stated your case really thoroughly at this point and I need you to stop digging in now.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:07 PM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

When I was 31ish, I met a man who was a few years older than me but still in his 30s. We had a consensual sexual relationship based on bdsm, specifically sadism and masochism, and domination and submission, and I do not take either of those things lightly. We talked about boundaries and consent and I had a safe word. I felt safe around him. I had him in my home.

Until one day he wanted sexual contact after a session of SM play and I didn't. And because I felt safe with this person, because I had, "take[n] some time to get to know someone and maybe even have a conversation (or multiple conversations!) about sex and expectations and and boundaries before [I] decide to" have sex with him, I told him I didn't want to. I used the actual word NO. He had no problem with that and we lay down and cuddled ... until five minutes later he was performing oral sex on me with the excuse that he just couldn't help himself because I was so sexy. And I froze, because I had already said NO but clearly he didn't care. And if he didn't care about me saying it once, why would I think that he would care if I said it again? Could I have physically pushed him off and yelled at him to get out of my house? Maybe. But if he could turn into this different person who didn't care about my consent, was I sure that he wouldn't physically hurt me to get what he wanted? No, I couldn't be sure. So I froze and I let him do what he wanted, and I pretended everything was fine to get him to leave, and the next day I emailed him and told him that he had sexually assaulted me and that I never wanted to see or speak to him again.

Every. Single. Man. I have disclosed this to has victim blamed me for not doing X or Y. Every single woman has understood exactly the split second of analysis I went through when I decided that not fighting back would allow me to get through the experience with the least amount of physical damage. Forget being able to downplay the emotional damage. I haven't trusted men since then, because I did everything right and he passed all the tests AND HE STILL ASSAULTED ME.

So can we please, fucking PLEASE, stop victim blaming?
posted by twilightlost at 12:07 PM on January 18, 2018 [72 favorites]

This certainty that if one simply does one or two things slightly different, none of this would have happened is a made-up thing that brains want to be true but we know from all kinds of studies are not.

Human behavior does not work that way. There are dozens of safety checks employed in operating rooms to prevent accidents and mistakes are still made and tools get left in people every day. Human reactions don't work that way: you could walk up to 100 strangers and silently hand them a rubber salmon and get like 50 different responses, including getting killed, because people don't run on tracks and everyone has their own configuration and damage and filters and ways of processing information. Short of some basic biological realities - yes she could have murdered him and he wouldn't have assaulted her, she could have filled his apartment with carbon monoxide, she could have set a decent-sized fire that couldn't be put out and required evacuation - there are no guarantees no matter how much you want for there to be guarantees.

There is nothing but a thin, highly-manipulated social contract, plus some physics, between scathed and unscathed in every single interaction human beings have and everything we do. Every time we send our kids out the door to school there's a chance they won't come home because of someone else's behavior no matter what they do in response to the threat, every time we go to work could be the last time, every time we walk into a gas station or a friend's house or another room there is no One Weird Trick to keep something bad from happening there. Just because you've walked down that street hundreds of times without getting hit by a car doesn't mean that your neighbor simply did it wrong when they did.

There is no "only just" that guarantees another human being won't hurt you. Your brain wants there to be. But there's not.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:29 PM on January 18, 2018 [49 favorites]

frankly, it's not an intersectional analysis to pit Aziz's PoC status against the accuser's feminine status - that's identity politics and not at all what Crenshaw and the Combahee Collective outlined decades ago. intersectional engagement along axes of oppression is specifically about connected, overlapping identities that create unique experiences of oppression

it's plainly obvious, at least to me, that Ansari was the beneficiary of hegemonic forces in this specific individual context - male, famous, rich, older. which means, in this specific context, the oppressions happened to a female, private, non-wealthy, younger person - by all definitions a far more vulnerable person. you add race to that equation and the calculus doesn't change much

I do think it's important to talk about Ansari's racial oppression and if he's being given a fair shake in the larger discourse - it's a valuable conversation to have considering that it is, indeed, the white, male elite who established and benefit the most and, thusly, abuse most their power here. but the discourse, as far as I can tell, is not equating Ansari with Weinstein or raising terror about potential Asian-Americans like me rising up and taking all of the women - all the conversations I'm seeing are using this incident as a jumping point to talk about cis male systems of oppression and how even gray-area sexual coercion is part and parcel to misogyny. nobody is arguing that Indian men are terrible, that she should've dated a white college-educated male instead - or the implicitly racist cultural relativist arguments about how his ethic might be different because his culture is (which it's obviously not)

with specific regard to the question of 'why stymie questions about the initiation of sexual assault when you can focus on the recovery and self-reflection process' - I mean, that's victim blaming in a nutshell. a just world would see that we don't need self-defense workshops - in order to reach that just world, we focus on fault, who committed the assault, how it should be stopped. in order to do that, we need to talk about the complicated and invisible ways that happens and the social dynamics that allow for it. but you can teach both a self-defense workshop, lead a therapy network, and ask that toxic masculinity and misogny be eradicated. there is room for both the systems work and the triage work. anti-racist activists like me aren't quarreling with public defenders because they aren't doing the right kind of preventative activism, for example - we're in this thing together, we're just working on different parts of the same oppressions
posted by runt at 1:01 PM on January 18, 2018 [45 favorites]

I have had an awful lot of conflicting thoughts about this story since it was first reported, but I've been content to listen and read other people's thoughts and keep my own mouth shut.

It looks, however, as if Katie Way, the author of the original story, may have put her foot in it, by referring in an email to Headline News anchor Ashleigh Banfield as "someone I'm certain no one under the age of 45 has ever heard of" and a "burgundy lipstick bad highlights second-wave feminist", and closed by saying, "I'm 22 and so far, not too shabby!"

To anticipate some of the responses:
-- Yes, Banfield was one of the media personalities most critical of Way's story.
-- Yes, Way's bad behavior has no impact on whether Aziz Ansari is a sleaze.

That said, Banfield is a respected journalist and experienced war correspondent who was booted by MSNBC in 2004 for being an outspoken critic of the Iraq War. And maybe criticizing another woman's age and looks is not terribly helpful in advancing the goal of supporting women.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 1:10 PM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

There were flaws in the journalism and Way shouldn't have written the letter the way she did, probably.

None of that seems to have impact on the actual story, which, I'll not Ansari hasn't denied. If this is an opportunity for us to revisit some journalistic standards, it shouldn't be at the expense of an important conversation that has resulted, which doesn't feel like it would be significantly impacted by the questions regarding Way as a writer.
posted by maxsparber at 1:16 PM on January 18, 2018 [19 favorites]

It's really about ethics in journalism.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:20 PM on January 18, 2018 [31 favorites]

maxsparber: I agree, and I wouldn't have mentioned it if I thought it would be a significant derail.

I also agree with the Jill Filipovic article linked above, that the journalistic flaws resulted in a missed opportunity. I've been wondering if issues with the writing of the article might cause some to doubt the veracity of Grace's story, or at least might lead them to believe that some of the details are overstated or exaggerated.

In any event, I think it's possible to have both conversations. Ansari's actions were disgusting and should be a wake-up call to men everywhere to put more thought into their interactions and stop ignoring women telling them to stop.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 1:24 PM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

In any event, I think it's possible to have both conversations

It’s really, really not though, and if you can’t see why “journalistic ethics” is a gas-lighty derail who’s only effect is to once again silence women, even after reading this entire thread, then I refer you to melissasaurus’ excellent comment above

Also maybe a man isn’t the best judge of what kind of conversation it’s possible or wise to have about this
posted by schadenfrau at 1:34 PM on January 18, 2018 [13 favorites]

I've been wondering if issues with the writing of the article might cause some to doubt the veracity of Grace's story, or at least might lead them to believe that some of the details are overstated or exaggerated.

Add that to the list of things a victim needs to do better next time to be believed? Awesome. Thanks for that.
posted by twilightlost at 1:35 PM on January 18, 2018 [17 favorites]

I mean it is literally changing the subject
posted by schadenfrau at 1:35 PM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

OK, like I said, I've been doing a lot of listening/reading. So I'll do some more. These are honest questions:

-- Is it not relevant that the author said some pretty horrible and non-feminist things about another woman while defending her story?

-- If it is relevant, is there a way to bring it up without sounding like concern trolling or changing the subject?

If the answer to either question is no, that's fine and I'll go back to shutting up. My point in bringing it up is not some GamerGate ploy to deflect from the real issue, but rather to figure out if there's anything we can do to help the real issue make a larger and wider impact.

On preview: Thanks, Gray Skies. And cjelli, those are all good points.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 1:47 PM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

If there is a non-victim-blamey way to discuss harm-reduction strategies -- and I'm not sure there is -- it needs to put the onus and responsibility entirely on the man.

IE, approaching a much-younger person for sex/romance is a red flag, and a guy who does so consistently should be assumed to be a predator. Inviting someone you just met to your home is a red flag. Hell, buying more than one drink for someone is a red flag. Flaunting or using fame or wealth with less famous/wealthy people is a red flag. Etc.

And the more of these behaviors a man (or person of any gender, really) exhibits, the more suspect they are, and the less credibility they should have if things go badly. At least this kind of discussion says nothing about the choices of the people they approach, in response to these suspect behaviors, because those choices don't change anything.
posted by msalt at 1:51 PM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

It seems pretty clear to me that it's a different conversation - it's not like the emails change any facts about the story, and the question of how young journalists should comport themselves in the face of their critics is a pretty different from the conversation happening in this thread.
posted by sagc at 1:53 PM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

After more thought, I withdraw the questions. Regardless of whether a conversation about Way's behavior is one worth having, here and now is not necessarily the appropriate time for that conversation. I was just surprised and wanted to share.

I will go back to trying to figure out how to convince my fellow men to stop being dicks.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 1:53 PM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

A few more things removed. Gray Skies, I realize you don't really spend time on the blue, so if this is somehow unclear: a moderator saying give it a rest means give it a rest. I need you to stop participating in the thread at this point.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:01 PM on January 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

Also maybe a man isn’t the best judge of what kind of conversation it’s possible or wise to have about this

Amen to this. And to quote an old friend (a "normal guy" type) from a discussion we had over Christmas. "You know, I had a sort of epiphany about the whole MeToo thing, all these people saying stuff like, yeah, it's a good thing now but watch out for it getting out of control, turning into some sort of PC witch hunt. The thing is, I know a lot of really smart women. In fact, my whole life, all through school, the smartest kid in the class was always a girl. I think that women are smart enough to not let this whole thing get out of control, and maybe the best thing we men can do is just shut up about it all until someone actually asks us to say something."

Or words to that effect.
posted by philip-random at 2:02 PM on January 18, 2018 [12 favorites]

the point I will agree with human ecologist about is that a conversation about the sexual assault of women of color by white hegemonic forces is centuries late. additionally, there is a problem with white feminist identity politics prioritizing white-centered perspectives, something you see really frequently just about everywhere you go. and, lastly, it's horrifyingly dystopian that nobody in the States really talks about colonialism because their understanding of racial politics only extends as far as the Civil Rights era and it's attendant attempts to educate white people on the basics of their own atrocious legacy - something only really revealed and, by now, largely forgotten as a consequence of what happened in Puerto Rico

all that said, this specific incident looked to me as something that managed to skirt all of this - delicately not denouncing Ansari or focusing on his race, talking about misogyny broadly, and reacting to the horrible pieces in the Atlantic, NYT, and WaPo, while also suggesting that a rich, white-centered #MeToo movement widen its targets to patriarchy as a whole, not just one specific aspect of it, because it is such a powerful thing backed by powerful people

Matt Damon is getting more hatred from establishment writers for being an ignorant shitheel than Aziz is for coercive sex - and I think that speaks a lot to the growing understanding of race politics in the US
posted by runt at 2:29 PM on January 18, 2018 [15 favorites]

We're Not Done Here, a Longread by Laurie Penny.
posted by bonehead at 2:40 PM on January 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

While I think that Penny and I disagree as to quite how culpable Ansari should be - I am personally 100% okay with starting up a blacklist for anyone who has coerced someone into sexual activity - this quote speaks to me.

Asking women if they love sex (implied: with men) is like asking the front-of-house staff how they feel about their work when the boss is listening.

.

Would it be better to have a world where men didn’t have that power? Yes. But that’s not the world we live in now.
posted by corb at 3:11 PM on January 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

So far no one is disputing any of the facts of what actually happened so why does journalism enter into it? There's literally nothing in dispute. We know what happened.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:29 PM on January 18, 2018 [12 favorites]

Because it's much easier to discount the entire story if you assassinate the character of the journalist that broke the story. That way you don't have to get your hands dirty by attacking the person who actually experienced the sexual coercion. You don't even have to touch that part of it when you make the journalist the story. Instead, the story becomes "ugh, young women and their lack of respect for their elders, no ethics, so untrustworthy", and as a matter of course, the story that journalist reported is automatically deemed to be bunk.
posted by palomar at 5:38 PM on January 18, 2018 [26 favorites]

I requested that Audible remove his book from my library. It's too late to return it, but at least I got to say hey, I'm not happy having a romance guide in my library by a guy accused of harassment and assault. Like an Ayn Rand Pot Luck Cookbook.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:16 PM on January 18, 2018 [8 favorites]

There's a sort of meta-thing going on there with the fact that babe.com is not a Serious Respected Journalistic Institution (frankly, as made obvious by Katie Way's reaction to Ashelgh Banfield, now made public... I remember thinking when the story first broke oh no why couldn't this have been in WaPo or NYT or something [b/c on a plain craft level the article is poorly edited]), so there's some kind of weird mental jiu-jiutsu people can use to dismiss Grace despite the fact nobody seems to dispute the facts from the original article.

I mean, that's obviously bizarre, because nobody is disputing those facts, but people predisposed to want to ignore some or all of them can use it as an excuse to do so anyhow, as if Grace's choice (?) of publishing outlet somehow must meet a certain credibility standard before her words can be seriously considered. Yeah, it's dumb.
posted by axiom at 9:11 PM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

Gaslighting women who have been assaulted by telling them it was their fault for not exercising their “agency” is one of the most common ways that women are victimized again. It is often reported to be as traumatizing as the assault itself. If you are not familiar with this topic, maybe read up on it.

OMG yes. That's what happened to me as a child, and I'm still dealing with fallout from that as I approach middle age.

I learned that men and boys were entitled to hurt me and do what they wanted with my body because I wasn't perfect enough to know and be able to always do or not do the million little things that supposedly discouraged or encouraged them to do so, before I learned how to tie my shoes and tell the time.

"Why is a man of color being publicly vilified for something men of all backgrounds do on a daily and nightly basis?"

Anyone who’s been reading the news lately should know that a lot of white dudes are starting to get called on this sort of crap.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:35 PM on January 18, 2018 [10 favorites]

babe.com is not a Serious Respected Journalistic Institution

Yeah, I just went there in my browser and it most definitely is not!

(babe.net is the site this was published on)
posted by ODiV at 10:16 PM on January 18, 2018

I mean, ok, my bad. Or is this where we start making jokes?
posted by axiom at 10:51 PM on January 18, 2018

I just thought after seeing the error crop up twice in the thread (and a lot elsewhere) I'd try to correct it in a funny, non-accusatory way. Apologies if I failed.
posted by ODiV at 11:12 PM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Apologies if I seem like I'm biting your head off. Is it a porn site (.com)? Because yeah, ok, a little funny, and I swear a 💯 innocent mistake on my part.
posted by axiom at 11:17 PM on January 18, 2018

James Hamblin in The Atlantic: “This Is Not a Sex Panic”
posted by Going To Maine at 2:53 AM on January 19, 2018 [6 favorites]

this was amazing to watch.
Samantha Bee: "Men, if you say you're a feminist, then fuck like a feminist. And if you don't want to do that, take off your fucking pin [image of #timesup pin on screen] because we are not your accessories."
posted by numaner at 6:35 AM on January 19, 2018 [29 favorites]

Samantha Bee calling out hypocrisy is certainly a very rich form of white feminism
posted by runt at 9:30 AM on January 19, 2018

Samantha Bee calling out hypocrisy is certainly a very rich form of white feminism

The article you linked doesn’t quote Samantha Bee at all. It does, however, quote her husband.

One P.S. 452 parent speaking out against the move is comedian and former Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones, who’s married to Samantha Bee. "To portray any opposition as classist or racist is as bad as it can get," Jones told WNYC. And elsewhere: "We are not divided,” he said at a public hearing about the proposal, “we are absolutely united in wanting what's best for our children," then encouraged fellow parents not to talk to the press about the controversy.

While we know that Jason Jones is, at best, a myopic, selfish dick who is unaware of his own casual racism, we have no idea what Samantha Bee thinks about the redistricting. There is a word for holding a woman responsible for her husband’s actions. Seems like we’ve been down this road before.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:12 AM on January 19, 2018 [33 favorites]

Going To Maine, thank you for the Atlantic article.

[T]hese stories of famous men and coercive behavior are not really about policing sex. When a person is reporting feeling coerced, and other people say the story shouldn’t have been told—or that people who personally relate to it are overreacting by saying as much—that’s a more disquieting type of policing.

We have two paths before us: One where there's a lot more of this "omg it's gone too far; innocent men are being accused of horrible things!" and increasingly convoluted justifications for their behavior and insistences that the women involved "should have just" [insert behavior change here].

Or... we back down, mumble something about "good that we caught a few of those bastards," and let the status quo take over again, accept that "men like locker room talk" and "look, on a date like that, a guy has certain expectations, y'know?" and "she was giving mixed signals" are all reasonable background noise for how relationships are built.

The "gone too far" rhetoric is tediously predictable, and part of the process, and I very much hope we keep pushing through it to find out what's on the other side.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:41 AM on January 19, 2018 [8 favorites]

Samantha Bee calling out hypocrisy is certainly a very rich form of white feminism

... and even if, how would that change the issue in question and the relevance of her response to it?
posted by philip-random at 12:07 PM on January 19, 2018 [6 favorites]

Regarding Katie Way's email to Ashleigh Banfield I want to clarify that Katie Way is the author of the article, but the woman who experienced the date is anonymous, and referred to as Grace.
posted by theora55 at 12:08 PM on January 19, 2018

Good point. This is also important when people criticize the way the original article was written, and there are some reasonable concerns best raised by Jill Filipovic in The Guardian.

None of which reflect on either Aziz or "Grace" or the fundamental issues at stake here. It is important how these issues are discussed, and the new, Rupert Murdoch-owned Babe.net deserves scrutiny, but that's all inside journalism baseball.

It's worth noting mostly only to refute backlash articles that try to defend Aziz or discredit Grace because Katie Way told their story poorly.
posted by msalt at 1:09 PM on January 19, 2018

The places I've most often seen the "look at this Katie Way email"/response/etc has been from exclusively cis het men seeking to discredit Grace/defend the normalcy of the "bad date." I think it's good to be mindful of when/where/how it gets discussed.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 1:32 PM on January 19, 2018 [9 favorites]

my impression is that a lot of women and non-cis het men have been pointing out the misogyny directed by Way towards Banfield

Wasn’t Banfield the journalist who went on about a “bad date?” If so, are they concerned with the misogyny Banfield directed at all women?

Because otherwise I’m gonna have to call shenanigans.
posted by schadenfrau at 2:18 PM on January 19, 2018 [6 favorites]

Besides the fact that Banfield has, what, three decades of professional experience? And Wray is twenty two?

Hmmm.
posted by schadenfrau at 2:19 PM on January 19, 2018

Has Way's email been verified?

I mean, it sounds utterly idiotic, immature and misguided. It could also be false.
posted by amanda at 2:52 PM on January 19, 2018

Given that Babe.net is a Rupert Murdoch-funded website with no staff older than 25, that runs stories like "What your favorite sex position says about what kind of hoe you are," the email doesn't seem that unrealistic.

According to the web site's "manifesto," "babe is into good news reporting, trash trends, personal stories, industry-leading analysis of fuckboys and the pettiest celebrity drama."

Also, Business Insider confirms the report, prints the entire much-longer email, and quotes Amanda Ross, an editor at Babe.net, who "said the comments Banfield read on air were "a fraction" of what Way sent to the anchor after an HLN producer asked her to come on the show to discuss the story." IE the email was a response to a request from Banfield's staff for Katie Way to appear on Banfield's show. So it seems pretty solid.
posted by msalt at 12:30 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah, Grace should have talked to a journalist at a reputable outlet like Glenn Thrush or Matt Lauer or Charlie Rose.
posted by melissasaurus at 6:55 AM on January 20, 2018 [19 favorites]

I read this thread after reading the one about "Cat Person". My initial reaction to the piece about Ansari was in line with the NYT article, in that I just thought of it as a case of bad sex and mismatched communication, not constituting sexual assault or even coercion. Reading the comments here shifted my perspective profoundly. I reread the article and clearly saw what I didn't see before. Similarly, in the case of "Cat Person", the ambiguity I felt about the story and its characters only shifted at the very end - I didn't see Robert's behavior as problematic from the start, while many MeFites did. In that case, too, rereading the story afterwards revealed the many red flags that I just didn't see at first.

In both cases it took real (discursive) force to distance me from my initial perspective. This has to to with a deeply rooted cognitive dissonance, because nobody likes to be confronted with the idea that behavior that you can somehow understand - or explain as a series of "honest mistakes" - is actually deeply problematic. It reminded me of something that happened years go.

After a night of (what I perceived as) "bad sex", my partner told me that she had felt taken advantage of. I felt humiliated but also perplexed, replying that I was sorry, but that I had repeatedly asked if she was okay and that she had said "yes", so "How could I know?"... thus absolving myself of responsibility. I actually knew that she wasn't having fun, I knew she was enduring rather than enjoying it, but that didn't stop me, because I was drunk and horny. The way I shifted the blame afterwards (by implying it was consensual because of her yes's, rather than admitting that I realized it wasn't) and even during sex (by posing the question to which I knew her honest answer) fills me with shame. It took me years to fully admit that this was a coercive sexual encounter, even though it didn't involve physical force or malice on my part, or explicit resistance on hers. I try to be mindful of others, I try to be nice, but I have done this thing which is just wrong.

So my experience, as a man, is indeed this: these men know what they are doing. This is not an accident, this is malicious disregard of [...] women's wishes in order to be sexually satisfied. I, for one, didn't need a clear "NO" to realize that what was going on was not okay. I just claimed to have needed it afterwards, to save face and keep my ego intact.
posted by Desertshore at 6:57 AM on January 20, 2018 [28 favorites]

Grace should have talked to a journalist at a reputable outlet like Glenn Thrush or Matt Lauer or Charlie Rose

Or maybe at least a publication that doesn’t uncritically let its white authors co-opt misogynist slang from hip-hop or celebrate the male gaze with a quote from a man actually convicted of sexual assault?

I feel like there’s probably some middle ground between the two... having the story published in Babe has created a lot of distraction from Grace’s story (which I fully believe) but that distraction certainly was avoidable and certainly is frustrating.
posted by eustacescrubb at 7:15 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Maybe if people want to talk about babe.net more broadly they can make a post on it?
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 7:49 AM on January 20, 2018 [10 favorites]

"What I Know About Aziz Ansari" by writer, director and performer, Heather Fink –

For all the years I’ve encountered Aziz, and it’s been many times — from early days in standup when he wasn’t famous yet, to fancy places like the bar at the Bowery Hotel, or some actor’s backyard in LA, or on the set of Master Of None — I have met him countless times and EVERY time he behaved the same way. He either legitimately never remembered me or pretended not to, he ignored me, was rude and dismissive of me and any female friend I was with — and I’m talking in situations where it’s just a small group of people — perhaps in a circle at a party, or 1 of 3 people sharing a table in a hotel lobby, or me wiring him with a mic on his show — — something I consider sacred and ordinarily don’t talk about work interactions publicly to respect privacy — but we’ll get to that later. In all of these situations I’m not talking about being ignored by some famous guy whose attention I desperately wanted. I’m talking about several truly banal interactions face to face where the “I’m ignoring that you are a person sharing space with me on this earth” was clearly beyond social norms, and the behavior I observed towards men in the room was patently affable.

Now all of this could be because he’s just shy with girls or weird or adorable or even fucking adorkable — however we want to make excuses for this kind of behavior. He notoriously treats women like they are invisible. But what does that really mean? What is a guy who can’t be cool around women really about? Why can’t he regard us as he regards men? Are we less than human? Are we objects? Are we not hot enough to him? Are we too hot? Are we symbolic of women from high school? Are we not worth conversation? Why are we so “other” and alien to him and men like him? What the hell is that heinous bullshit about — and HOW did that brilliant episode of Master Of None come from this man?!

This, too, is just regular shit. It's not assault but it should be known. Known beyond the confines of our own "personal" experiences.
posted by amanda at 7:53 AM on January 20, 2018 [20 favorites]

And it's both about Aziz – maybe a guy who doesn't seem to view women as equally worth of attention and respect in public spaces and can't seem to integrate them into his social spaces in a normal healthy way is also the kind of guy that can't seem to make that switch in private. The weirdness in the Grace story starts with their date where he rushes the meal along, doesn't pay attention to her, orders her alcohol she doesn't want to drink.

And it's not just about Aziz or even men, necessarily. It's about how those with power use it. I've seen men shut out of conversations that are primarily taking place among women. It's a power play - the ladies are talking and we have the power right now to make you sit outside of our circle. When you constantly have to come up against those circles of real or imagined power (as you do in the world of work or in your industry where you are a minority) and are shut out it has real consequences to your ability to succeed, make money, make a career and you personally take a hit on your self worth and sense of your own contributions to the world.
posted by amanda at 8:09 AM on January 20, 2018 [6 favorites]

It sounds like even worse is going to be revealed about Aziz in the future, reading that post. Dammit.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:29 AM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

and HOW did that brilliant episode of Master Of None come from this man?!

Sometimes it seems as if the only class we allow ourselves to label as "hypocrites" is politicians.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:53 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

and HOW did that brilliant episode of Master Of None come from this man?!

A person can be aware of the right things to do while also not doing them, and self-hate (or even just cognitive dissonance) in realizing this powerlessness could probably energize the writing process. Awareness is the first step, after all, but that doesn't mean the second step is ever actually taken. It's not a good excuse, but from what I know about psychology this kind of hypocrisy isn't untenable.
posted by rhizome at 11:24 AM on January 20, 2018 [4 favorites]

It sounds like even worse is going to be revealed about Aziz in the future, reading that post. Dammit.

A date like that one is not his first time using those tactics. This was not a case of, "I'll try this to see if it works;" it was, "this is my A game, my guaranteed get-laid-tonight technique." He has definitely done this to many other women - the only question is whether they still care about it later, and are willing to face the public backlash from coming forward.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:57 AM on January 20, 2018 [14 favorites]

and HOW did that brilliant episode of Master Of None come from this man?!

Pretty much the same way Louis CK was able to make a bunch of jokes that seem to get exactly how much it sucks for women to be treated the way he treated them.
posted by straight at 2:38 PM on January 20, 2018 [12 favorites]

"[Men] are the worst thing that ever happens to [women]." -Louis CK

That whole bit is about how men are historically/statistically the #1 threat to women, and yet first dates where the man just tries anything still happen... I feel like there's something so strange about how these comics who turn out to be shitheels also have insight into the exact thing they're shitheels about. They can perform it even if they don't live it. Which suggests that either they don't bother to not be shitty (because they ~~can~~ used to get away with it) or they don't actually understand that their private behavior is the antithesis of their performance (and professed views).
posted by axiom at 3:31 PM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

A person can be aware of the right things to do while also not doing them, and self-hate (or even just cognitive dissonance) in realizing this powerlessness could probably energize the writing process.

It seems to me that people find it easier to assume that dark art isn't aspirational or a view of an artist's intent, but also that art with a positive message is. That is, we are willing to separate art and artist if the work is grim and we like it, but if something portrays a virtue we are disinclined to allow for daylight between the person and the ideal.

It's possible that Aziz Ansari was inspired by the tension between his ideals and his desires - plenty of people have been, and I find that story compelling. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the story he tells when he comes back / continues to stick around. But I still want to follow all these trips into his imagined tortured interior life with a rider that your interior life doesn't matter. We can only see the you that is expressed in actions. So good for him if self-loathing gave him a charge, but that isn't our problem.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:33 PM on January 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

They can perform it even if they don't live it.

The ability of some people to tell massive lies is endlessly compelling to those of us who don't believe we could do the same thing.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:36 PM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

It's possible that Aziz Ansari was inspired by the tension between his ideals and his desires - plenty of people have been, and I find that story compelling.

There's a darker explanation that also fits -- that predators are driven by power more than sexual needs, have studied and learned all of the nuances of abusive interactions, and savor all of the pain they cause. Obviously Trump fits this too.

I read somewhere recently a definition of sociopaths -- that they have keen awareness of the pain they are causing people, but no empathy for that suffering or morals about causing it. Such a person would be adept at portraying such interactions on screen, and could easily figure out how to add a fake "socially conscious" frame to make it acceptable.
posted by msalt at 5:58 PM on January 20, 2018

I think the odds of Aziz being a sociopath are near zero. The disturbing truth is that this behavior is common among a broad swath of men. Including too many who in most other respects we'd consider decent people.
posted by Justinian at 6:01 PM on January 20, 2018 [16 favorites]

I don't see any big mystery about how someone could make insightful jokes related to their own bad behavior. I can make all kinds of clever quips about my procrastinating or the nature of procrastination in general without it making me any less likely to procrastinate. If anything, humor helps me not feel so bad about my failings.

If you need someone who can reliably get things done ahead of schedule, check out my deeds, not how eloquently I can explain why procrastination makes people unhappy.
posted by straight at 8:50 PM on January 20, 2018 [19 favorites]

It's possible that Aziz Ansari was inspired by the tension between his ideals and his desires - plenty of people have been, and I find that story compelling. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the story he tells when he comes back / continues to stick around. But I still want to follow all these trips into his imagined tortured interior life with a rider that your interior life doesn't matter.

You’re talking about a comedian, not Caravaggio...
posted by bitteschoen at 1:27 AM on January 21, 2018

#MeToo is a superb phenomenon but we all need training to overcome the instinct to defend loved ones
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:03 AM on January 21, 2018 [3 favorites]

It's possible that Aziz Ansari was inspired by the tension between his ideals and his desires - plenty of people have been, and I find that story compelling.

Or it's possible that he has the extremely common mental block of "....okay, yeah, I know it looks like I did that but my situation was different".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:40 AM on January 21, 2018 [3 favorites]

I don’t know ANY adult women or men without sexual assault or harassment experiences of some kind. You probably don’t either.

Identifying and punishing abusers satifies the gestalt. It feels good and right and omg finally. But we have so much more work to do. Case in point: media coverage of these celebrity encounters ends up being more about the abusers than the victims.

We are lost.

We might not find.

But our children must. That is the responsibility we face: unravelling the false norm that results in #MeToo. Listening. Teaching. Healing.
posted by Kalatraz at 2:59 AM on January 21, 2018

But our children must. That is the responsibility we face: unravelling the false norm that results in #MeToo. Listening. Teaching. Healing.

Listening to who? Teaching what? Healing how? The first two of those especially have nowhere near universally agreed upon answers which makes the third quite difficult to start on.
posted by PMdixon at 3:08 AM on January 21, 2018

It's about how those with power use it. I've seen men shut out of conversations that are primarily taking place among women. It's a power play - the ladies are talking and we have the power right now to make you sit outside of our circle.

Having men not be in these circles still does greater good than not, right? Because I thought it was the right to have women only spaces where they can speak out without having to worry about men.
posted by FJT at 9:42 AM on January 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

“A man has been destroyed through this.”

Great example of evil use of the passive voice. "Has been destroyed"? Destroyed by whom?

Trying to phrase it as "'Grace' has destroyed this man" would seem too far even for Flanagan, so she obfuscates through grammar. "Has been destroyed."

No, you tool and supporter of patriarchy and abuse, what's happening is that's he's facing consequences for his own actions.
posted by Lexica at 9:47 AM on January 21, 2018 [23 favorites]

It's possible that Aziz Ansari was inspired by the tension between his ideals and his desires - plenty of people have been, and I find that story compelling.

Or it's possible that he has the extremely common mental block of "....okay, yeah, I know it looks like I did that but my situation was different".

Absolutely, and that's much more likely. What I was trying to express is my belief that Ansari may tell the truth about what he did, or he may be telling the version that sounds best and makes it easiest to remain employed or make a return sooner. That simple story is most likely to be fine.

You’re talking about a comedian, not Caravaggio...

Hilariously, I was actually thinking about Caravaggio when reading rhizome's comment, so perhaps I was. Also, I think that being at a dinner party where someone defended Caravaggio has still left me a bit steamed, years later.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:34 AM on January 21, 2018

Megan Garber at The Atlantic: "Aziz Ansari and the Paradox of 'No'"
posted by Going To Maine at 10:41 AM on January 21, 2018 [2 favorites]

Thanks for that link. It laid bare for me a striking bit of hypocrisy that I hadn't noticed before:

People upset by the idea of affirmative consent argue that requiring a sexual request to be said, directly and out loud, will "ruin" sex which by nature involves all sorts of silent negotiation.

But when someone such as Grace says "No!" clearly but (mostly) without words, suddenly the standard reverses and it's her responsibility to state that No in a loud clear and unambiguous voice. Sexually aggressive men can't be expected to voice their request out loud, and yet somehow are free to ignore even the clearest non-verbal refusal. They alone have the right of non-verbal action, basically.
posted by msalt at 11:26 AM on January 21, 2018 [33 favorites]

However, if you clearly say No, you could be setting yourself up for terrifying repercussions. Or it just doesn't matter if you say no, period.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:35 AM on January 21, 2018 [3 favorites]

No, you tool and supporter of patriarchy and abuse, what's happening is that's he's facing consequences for his own actions.

Funny thing I just had a wild-hair about: Google "a man has been destroyed through this" and "a woman has been destroyed through this," and see the difference in results. Men appear to complain a lot.
posted by rhizome at 11:53 AM on January 21, 2018 [8 favorites]

"Destroyed" is a very strong word. Has Aziz actually been fired or faced any other significant real-world consequences so far?
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:30 PM on January 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

From the article linked by Going to Marine above, Megan Garber at The Atlantic: "Aziz Ansari and the Paradox of 'No'"

...the women of today live within the exhaust of longstanding demands on femininity: that women be pleasing. That they be compliant. That they be nice. That they avoid, in sexual encounters as in so many other kinds, making things awkward. “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 Ansari story, as told by Way, is on top of everything else one of a woman who tried, repeatedly, to communicate “no” without actually saying it—until, finally, she had no other choice. It is a story, as well, about those protestations going either unheard or ignored or thoroughly misunderstood.

posted by salvia at 1:50 PM on January 21, 2018 [6 favorites]

Has Aziz actually been fired or faced any other significant real-world consequences so far?

Not yet, but "fired" from what by whom? I suppose Netflix could drop Master of None S3 (unlikely, but not impossible). Right now I get the suspicion that, because of the non-uniformity in the reaction to this story, commercial entities are probably taking a wait-and-see approach. If people start showing up to his shows less and less that might have an impact, but it's awfully hard to predict that outcome. 6 months ago Bill Cosby was set to tour and nixed it due to his second trial.
posted by axiom at 3:26 PM on January 21, 2018 [2 favorites]

The local bookstore has "Modern Love" in its Valentine's display.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:13 PM on January 21, 2018

Grrr.
posted by lazuli at 6:21 PM on January 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

I found Ijeoma Oluo’s response to be really powerful: “In The Midst Of #MeToo, What Type Of Man Do You Want To Be?”

"Right now, in the midst of this rising discussion around sexual abuse and assault, you — men — have the chance to look it all right in the face. You have the chance to look at the type of men you have been. You have the chance to look at how you’ve been treating women and how you define your relationships with them. You have the chance to re-evaluate what you deem “victory” or “defeat.” You have the chance to determine for yourselves what you consider to be a healthy and satisfying sexual or romantic encounter.

You have the chance right now, while it’s all being brought up, to decide that the way you’ve been is not the way you want to be. You have the chance to decide that you do not want the women in your life to fear you, to survive you, to endure you, to resent you. You have the chance to decide that you do not want to dominate, to conquer, to overcome, to defeat the women you claim to love and respect. And you have the chance to decide that you no longer want to associate, through your words and actions, with men who do want to continue to be this type of man.

You get to decide that now. You get to hear about the way in which women have been harmed by men and decide to be a better man. You get to defend that notion of a man. You get to debate for this change. You get to fervently argue that you will no longer accept this old, abusive notion of manhood. You get to choose a better path.

Or you can keep arguing to uphold the way things are.

But know that with whichever way you decide, you are telling us, and yourself, what type of man you want to be."

Also really worth reading because of her account of how a man who was defending "getting a woman drunk in order to coerce her into sex" as normal and unproblematic suddenly backed down when she asked if he would get a bro drunk in order to coerce him into a chill bro hangout. Weirdly enough, with that new framework, he suddenly didn't have an explanation for why one was okay and one was obviously uncool and harmful.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 6:21 AM on January 22, 2018 [30 favorites]

... NATIONAL TREASURE Ijeoma Oluo...
posted by sutureselves at 8:13 AM on January 22, 2018 [5 favorites]

Thanks for all the great comments here, folks. This whole story has been insanely frustrating to me – it just makes me livid, particularly an extraordinarily hateful video by a certain TV reporter. Over the past few days I've found myself confronted constantly online by people who say: "she never said no! How was he supposed to know she was uncomfortable if she never said no?" – despite the fact that the Babe article lists at least three times where Grace clearly turned him down, saying things like "hold on, chill for a minute" and "next time" and even just plain "no." Until I'm blue in the face, I point out: all those things mean NO! They mean NO so obviously and so directly that I am stunned that people try to argue otherwise. "No means no" was a feminist slogan in the 1960s - this is something that's been a well-known phrase for over half a century. Are we seriously still not sure about this? Have people seriously not internalized this very, very simple idea that if a woman says "no," or any analogue of "no," and a man has sex with her anyway, it's rape, regardless of whether she's kicking and screaming or she's lying there uncomfortably and passively?

And I write a few all-caps angry comments about how people are being intentionally obtuse, or using a story they've barely read to make a political point they were eager to make – "this has all gone too far!" And I do breathing exercises and say a few hail marys until I calm down, because it just makes me so angrily disturbed that people want to turn human sexuality into a perverse game of Simon Says where the punishment for not phrasing your discomfort properly is getting raped.

And then when I stop and think I realize: this is the shitty, disgusting, tense, empty feeling women have been living with for a very long time. And that's depressing. But... as obnoxious as it may be for me personally – I am glad we're talking about this.
posted by koeselitz at 11:22 AM on January 22, 2018 [13 favorites]

Oh, and since I didn't see it here – I really loved this piece by the excellent Danielle Tcholakian: On Aziz Ansari and Rape Culture's Generation Gap.
posted by koeselitz at 11:28 AM on January 22, 2018 [6 favorites]

We really need to update that quote to, "Not-Tonight Means No."
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:41 AM on January 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

6 months ago Bill Cosby was set to tour and nixed it due to his second trial.

Not so fast.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:58 AM on January 23, 2018

So, Vox published a bullshit article asserting that an affirmative consent standard would be bad law from...a lawyer working for a firm that seems to make its money defending these sorts of assholes (so, not exactly unbiased there.)

The part that has me seeing red is this:

First, an affirmative consent rule is offensive to longstanding notions of how we ought to respond to allegations of wrongdoing. Affirmative consent policies shift who has to prove what in ways that we would reject in connection with any other allegation. If affirmative consent is the rule, the accuser does not have to prove that a sexual assault occurred; the accused must demonstrate that consent was obtained. A foundational belief of our legal system is that you don’t have to prove your innocence. The entity accusing you has to prove your guilt.

This is utterly wrong. The reality is that we treat sexual assault and rape different from other crimes because of that assumption of consent - you don't see assertions of consent in things like assault or theft except in rare cases. The affirmative consent standard would, in fact, realign sexual assault and rape to be in line with other charges. Yes, it would make asserting consent was given into an affirmative defense, but here's the thing - affirmative defenses do exist, and they exist because there are situations where the main facts of the matter are not in question, but the defense is arguing that there is something that makes the conduct lawful. This does not break the assumption of innocence.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:54 AM on January 24, 2018 [11 favorites]

First, an affirmative consent rule is offensive to longstanding notions of how we ought to respond to allegations of wrongdoing. Affirmative consent policies shift who has to prove what in ways that we would reject in connection with any other allegation. If affirmative consent is the rule, the accuser does not have to prove that a sexual assault occurred; the accused must demonstrate that consent was obtained.

Ha ha. No.

First, an affirmative receipt of payment rule is offensive to longstanding notions of how we ought to respond to allegations of wrongdoing. Affirmative receipt policies shift who has to prove what in ways that we would reject in connection with any other allegation. If affirmative receipt is the rule, the accuser does not have to prove that a theft occurred; the accused must demonstrate that a sale was made.
posted by Thella at 12:43 PM on January 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yeah, it's one of the most arrogant arguments out there, especially because it breaks down when you compare sexual assault and rape to pretty much any other crime. Either we're treating every other crime wrong, or there's a double standard that needs to die - pick one.

Also, he asks thes two insipid questions later:

Is it fair to Ansari to hold him to a standard that, while undisputed in some progressive quarters, has not been universally adopted?

And, leaving aside the violence that is done to burdens of proof, is it fair to hold young men in college to those standards, when the consequences for acting in violation of them are so severe?

The answers are yes, because no means fucking no; and yes, because no means FUCKING NO.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:59 PM on January 24, 2018 [6 favorites]

is it fair to hold young men in college to those standards, when the consequences for acting in violation of them are so severe?

C'mon, we acknowledge that this college guy totally murderized somebody, but is it fair to hold him to the "don't murder people" standard when the consequences for acting in violation of it is so severe?
posted by Lexica at 7:47 PM on January 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

I was a young guy in college and the standard of respecting consent does not seem like an unreasonable imposition.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:17 PM on January 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Another guy realizes: I thought I was one of the good guys. Then I read the Aziz Ansari story.

NSFW; includes graphic description; nicely describes both what he was feeling/thinking at the time, and how wrong it all looks to him now.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:45 PM on January 24, 2018 [7 favorites]

In a bit of good news, the recall petition against Aaron Persky, the judge who gave convicted rapist Brock Turner a sweetheart sentence, has been certified and will be on the ballot. Sadly, Stanford continues to not get it, and Turner's victim is no longer working with them on the memorial after their tonedeafness.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:19 AM on January 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

The local bookstore has "Modern Love" in its Valentine's display.

It's entirely appropriate to let them know what a terrible idea that is. You could even share the name of the store in case other people wanted to join the effort.

Also, WTF? Are they also selling copies of Woody Allen's movie "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex" and Bill Cosby's book "Little Bill Punch-Out Valentines"?
posted by msalt at 12:15 PM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

Instead, Doe will no longer be involved with the plaque at all, since Stanford reportedly rejected two of her suggested quotations, both pulled from her famously heart-rending victim’s statement, campus outlet The Fountain Hopper first reported.

According to the site, Stanford decided that instead of using Doe’s quotations as originally planned, it would rather just pick a line itself. And of the many, many standout sentences to choose from, what did it go with? “I’m okay, everything’s okay,” a snippet of text surely not meant to characterize Doe’s feelings about her assault, but uttered in attempt to calm her terrified sister upon her release from the hospital.

I fucking can't. What the fuck.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:57 AM on January 27, 2018 [13 favorites]

Alexandra Petri, WaPo: Instead of changing men’s behavior, why not just lock all women underground?

EVERYWHERE, United States of America — Good news! The #MeToo movement has penetrated the national consciousness, and changes are being made.

“We figured there were two possible outcomes,” said Ellen Harph, a feminist activist. “The first option was that in the private sphere, men would be willing to sit down and do the difficult work of understanding why for many women, sex — even when consensual — can be kind of an unpleasant experience, and then we would all work together to guarantee a much better time for everyone involved. And in the public sphere, workplaces would just have some very simple conversations about what not to do and then everyone would continue as usual, but feeling more confident they could complain if there were problems. This just seemed like an obvious win for everyone. The second option was that men would decide it would be easier if they just arranged never to have to talk to a woman again and ignored all feedback suggesting that they were not the love gods they had previously anticipated.”

“I don’t know why I expected them to take the first option,” Ellen continued. “I think I’d been reading too many books with male characters written by women.”

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:32 PM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]

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