Is #MeToo Missing The Mark?
I read an article over the weekend on "Babe.net" (oh, boy - red flag #1) of an account that directly accused Aziz Ansari of giving a woman the "worst night of her life," while also subtly accusing him of "sexual assault." Although some of what I read could certainly be considered "creepy," absolutely none of it could feasibly be considered "assault."
Let me preface this article with the fact that I don't know Aziz (obviously), found him irritating in his role on the NBC show Parks and Recreation, and don't really care much for his comedy. But what transpired with this article is a perfect example of just how overblown the #metoo "movement" (I have my own opinions about how and why this "movement" got started, but that's a subject for a different time) has become, and how the lines between creepy behavior and actual sexual assault and rape have been blurred...for the worse.
It makes women who were actually assaulted and raped less likely to speak up...and harder to hear, because it's distorted with the noise from drivel like this.
To me, this appears to be little more than a thinly-veiled ploy from a slighted ex-fling to bring down Aziz.
Let's break down the relevant points of this account of the "worst night of her life."
Grace said it was surreal to be meeting up with Ansari, a successful comedian and major celebrity, and she was “excited” for their date.
The day after the incident, she wrote a long text to Ansari, saying: “I just want to take this moment to make you aware of [your] behavior and how uneasy it made me.” To that message, Ansari responds: “Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.”
These two paragraphs really set the tone. It's wholly apparently that there were two different expectations for the date from the get-go: Aziz wanted casual sex (not unheard of in the age of Tinder, no?) and she wanted to be his girlfriend... and the gravitas of being with a celebrity.
Let's see how this night went.
After arriving at his apartment in Manhattan on Monday evening, they exchanged small talk and drank wine. “It was white,” she said. “I didn’t get to choose and I prefer red, but it was white wine.”
Cruel man. He didn't let her choose the wine. Get out of there right away, girlfriend. Why the hell was this even included in the article? Simply to make him look like an ass and try to set an ominous tone? Maybe he prefers white? (Weird, they never mentioned who paid for the meal.)
Grace says she sensed Ansari was eager for them to leave. “When the waiter came over he quickly asked for the check and he said like, ‘Let’s get off this boat.’” She recalls there was still wine in her glass and more left in the bottle he ordered. The abruptness surprised her. “Like, he got the check and then it was bada-boom, bada-bing, we’re out of there.”
He probably sensed that she didn't like the wine. But obviously, yeah, he was horny.
They walked the two blocks back to his apartment building, an exclusive address on TriBeCa’s Franklin Street, where Taylor Swift has a place too. When they walked back in, she complimented his marble countertops. According to Grace, Ansari turned the compliment into an invitation. “He said something along the lines of, ‘How about you hop up and take a seat?’”
What's left out here? She DID hop up on his countertops, obviously, otherwise this wouldn't have happened:
Within moments, he was kissing her. “In a second, his hand was on my breast.” Then he was undressing her, then he undressed himself. She remembers feeling uncomfortable at how quickly things escalated.
Why didn't she stop him and say something at this point? Why did she let him undress her? Why did she let him get undressed?
When Ansari told her he was going to grab a condom within minutes of their first kiss, Grace voiced her hesitation explicitly. “I said something like, ‘Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill.’” She says he then resumed kissing her, briefly performed oral sex on her, and asked her to do the same thing to him. She did, but not for long. “It was really quick. Everything was pretty much touched and done within ten minutes of hooking up, except for actual sex.”
Let's break this down for a second here. It's not totally out of the realm of possibility that they would be having sex...she let him undress her, and he's undressed. Sure, it's a little quick and there's not much foreplay there. Sounds like Aziz is just bad at having sex, to me. Seems completely reasonable that he would want to grab a condom.
"Let's relax for a sec" doesn't sound like "no," to me. It sounds like "Slow down there cowboy, I need to be warmed up," which is why he began performing oral sex on her...apparently without any resistance. Oh, and then she did the same to him. Again, without saying no. Or leaving. Or being explicit about what she really wanted...because at this point she didn't know, either. She was still feeling out the situation to see if she had any chance of a long-term relationship, at which point, all of this would probably be OK.
So, maybe she explicitly expressed "hesitation," but it sounds more like "you're going too fast" rather than "don't go there" at all.
She says Ansari began making a move on her that he repeated during their encounter. “The move he kept doing was taking his two fingers in a V-shape and putting them in my mouth, in my throat to wet his fingers, because the moment he’d stick his fingers in my throat he’d go straight for my vagina and try to finger me.” Grace called the move “the claw.”
Again...Aziz is clearly bad at sex and understanding how to warm up women. Which is really the entire point of this article.
Ansari also physically pulled her hand towards his penis multiple times throughout the night, from the time he first kissed her on the countertop onward. “He probably moved my hand to his dick five to seven times,” she said. “He really kept doing it after I moved it away.”
Yeah, he probably thought she was being coy and playful because she had no problems with putting it in your mouth just minutes before, so why would he think that she would be uncomfortable touching it while she kissed him?
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 and sticking his fingers down my throat again. It was really repetitive. It felt like a fucking game.”
Yes, because she had just blown him and he wasn't sure what her intentions are. And he thought he was turning her on. Clearly he didn't do a very good job.
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.”
This line really grinds my gears. "Verbal and non-verbal cues?" Are you fucking kidding me?
At ANY POINT during this encounter, she could have said "No," "I'm done with this," "What the hell are you doing?" and put her clothes on and left. At ANY TIME, even after she had oral sex with him. Was he physically blocking her from leaving? It sure doesn't sound like it to me.
Whether Ansari didn’t notice Grace’s reticence or knowingly ignored it is impossible for her to say. “I know I was physically giving off cues that I wasn’t interested. I don’t think that was noticed at all, or if it was, it was ignored.”
Here's the subtle suggestion that this was sexual assault.
Guess what? She was not clear about her intentions or what she wanted...at all. She was naked or nearly naked. Kissing him. Having oral sex with him. She didn't say "no" or even threaten to leave up to this point. I think most men would have been confused in this situation.
Ansari wanted to have sex. She said she remembers him asking again and again, “Where do you want me to fuck you?” while she was still seated on the countertop. She says she found the question tough to answer because she says she didn’t want to fuck him at all.
She didn't? Then why didn't she say so? This should be an easy one to answer: "Nowhere."
“I wasn’t really even thinking of that, I didn’t want to be engaged in that with him. But he kept asking, so I said, ‘Next time.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, you mean second date?’ and I go, ‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ and he goes, ‘Well, if I poured you another glass of wine now, would it count as our second date?’” He then poured her a glass and handed it to her. She excused herself to the bathroom soon after.
She just explicitly said she would be willing to have sex with him.
He was trying to be witty. And get laid sooner.
Grace says she spent around five minutes in the bathroom, collecting herself in the mirror and splashing herself with water. Then she went back to Ansari. He asked her if she was okay. “I said I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you,” she said.
"Feel forced?"
She told babe that at first, she was happy with how he reacted. “He said, ‘Oh, of course, it’s only fun if we’re both having fun.’ The response was technically very sweet and acknowledging the fact that I was very uncomfortable. Verbally, in that moment, he acknowledged that I needed to take it slow. Then he said, ‘Let’s just chill over here on the couch.’” This moment is particularly significant for Grace, because she thought that would be the end of the sexual encounter — her remark about not wanting to feel “forced” had added a verbal component to the cues she was trying to give him about her discomfort. When she sat down on the floor next to Ansari, who sat on the couch, she thought he might rub her back, or play with her hair — something to calm her down.
"Adding a verbal component to the cues"...
Yes, she expressed she was uncomfortable. But she had already engaged in oral sex. Was unclothed. Made no motions to get dressed, from what I can tell.
Ansari instructed her to turn around. “He sat back and pointed to his penis and motioned for me to go down on him. And I did. I think I just felt really pressured. It was literally the most unexpected thing I thought would happen at that moment because I told him I was uncomfortable.”
This is REALLY the moment where it should be obvious to GTFO. Why would she not simply say no and leave? Yes, clearly he's "pressuring you," and I certainly admit, he's even being creepy at this point. But guess what? It's not totally clear that she's not into what he's doing either...because...she went down on him again. She suspected at this point that she was going to be a one-night stand and she wanted something more. He didn't.
Soon, he pulled her back up onto the couch. She would tell her friend via text later that night, “He [made out] with me again and says, ‘Doesn’t look like you hate me.’”
It doesn't look like it to me either.
Halfway into the encounter, he led her from the couch to a different part of his apartment. He said he had to show her something. Then he brought her to a large mirror, bent her over and asked her again, “Where do you want me to fuck you? Do you want me to fuck you right here?” He rammed his penis against her ass while he said it, pantomiming intercourse.
Again, creepy. But he's obviously really bad at having sex, likely from having a string of one-time affairs that mean nothing. And, she had just blown him again, so...not totally out of the realm of possibility that she wouldn't be into it now.
“I just remember looking in the mirror and seeing him behind me. He was very much caught up in the moment and I obviously very much wasn’t,” Grace said. “After he bent me over is when I stood up and said no, I don’t think I’m ready to do this, I really don’t think I’m going to do this. And he said, ‘How about we just chill, but this time with our clothes on?’”
Clearly he picked up on this "cue" and the fact she finally said "no," this time.
They got dressed, sat side by side on the couch they’d already “chilled” on, and he turned on an episode of Seinfeld. She’d never seen it before. She said that’s when the reality of what was going on sank in. “It really hit me that I was violated. I felt really emotional all at once when we sat down there. That that whole experience was actually horrible.” While the TV played in the background, he kissed her again, stuck his fingers down her throat again, and moved to undo her pants. She turned away. She remembers “feeling in a different mindset at that point.”
Yep. Creepy, and pressuring. He's an idiot for not understanding what she really wanted, but was likely confused because she had gone down on him...twice...and if she truly wasn't interested, she would have left a lot sooner than she did. And she would have left before sitting down to watch an episode of Seinfeld she hadn't seen (why the hell was this included in the article, either?)
“I remember saying, ‘You guys are all the same, you guys are all the fucking same.’” Ansari asked her what she meant. When she turned to answer, she says he met her with “gross, forceful kisses.” After that last kiss, Grace stood up from the couch, moved back to the kitchen island where she left her phone, and said she would call herself a car. He hugged her and kissed her goodbye, another “aggressive” kiss. When she pulled away, Ansari finally relented and insisted he’d call her the car.
Hey, finally! She figured out he's looking for something different than she is and that it's time to leave. Yep, he did some creepy, weird shit for someone on their first date...desperate even...
...but sorry, she wasn't forced in any way, or sexually assaulted. She sent serious mixed signals, and although I would have definitely not done things the way Aziz did, to blow this up into a public spectacle - for attention - was wholly unnecessary. This wouldn't be news if Aziz wasn't a "celebrity."
Aziz is really bad at pleasing women and was in "Tinder mode." Dare I say, he's even a dishonorable jerk, and clearly it's coming back to him, as he's an unmarried 34-year-old that...is clearly still really bad at having sex. That said, I'm sorry - but he's not a rapist and didn't use any "position of privilege" to exploit the situation, other than the fact he's a minor celebrity...which clearly was important to her in going on the date in the first place.
There's more to the article, but it's simply background noise. I'm not the only one who thinks this account was more-than-a-little overblown and doesn't deserve the media attention it got.
This line from the Atlantic article says it best:
And what she and the writer who told her story created was 3,000 words of revenge porn. The clinical detail in which the story is told is intended not to validate her account as much as it is to hurt and humiliate Ansari.
Long story, short: This is a story of a woman who was "pressured" into having sex from a minor celebrity that is (really) bad at having sex, who sent out mixed signals about whether she was interested in engaging sexually or not, and then realized after the fact she was not going to be his girlfriend... so she exploited the situation to get attention... and her 15 minutes of fame.
This entire article was a serious eyeroll for me...because it doesn't directly accuse Aziz of anything other than being creepy...and because they know it's not sexual assault, despite the insinuation that it was. She's out to ruin his career (and sex life) because she didn't get what she wanted. It was clear from the start: he's just not that into you.
Grace is a 23-year-old Brooklyn-based photographer, then aged 22. We are not using her real name to protect her identity because she is not a public figure. She says Ansari brushed her off at first, but after he realized they both brought the same kind of camera to the event, an old model from the 80s, he was impressed.
He thought someone pursuing him would want to have sex. He misread the situation - kind of? - and was far too aggressive (and ineffective) at trying to re-kindle the fire when he was (very halfheartedly) rebuffed.
It makes me feel disgusted for the many, many women who have far more important stories to share - especially about those who are abusing their positions of power. The focus on sideshows such as this one distorts the real problem.