When news broke on Monday that comedian Aziz Ansari has joined the line of famous men accused of sexual misconduct, many were struck by a paralysing disappointment.
Without doubt, we have entered into a difficult but crucial threshold in the #MeToo movement, where alleged abusers aren’t just or closet misogynists, but men .
Men who have of writing about strong, feminist women. Men, who until last week, pledged their solidarity by wearing the and demanded that accusers be heard, that women’s voices matter and those who abuse their power will continue to be held to account.
Ansari, who rose to fame by playing witty, , penning a bestselling book on and in his stand-ups, was accused of sexual assault by a 23-year-old photographer, under the pseudonym ‘Grace’.
The Brooklyn-based woman told online publication that the 34-year-old star had repeatedly groped, made aggressive advances and pressured her for sex during a date last year.
At Ansari’s Tribeca apartment, their physical interaction escalated despite Grace’s use of verbal and non verbal cues asking him to slow down. Throughout the night, Ansari repeatedly “stuck his finger down her throat”, directed her hand toward his penis, and harassed her for oral sex, even after witnessing her discomfort and conceding, “It’s only fun if we’re both enjoying it.”
Eventually heading home in tears, Grace texted Ansari the following day to make clear that the encounter had left her feeling distressed and violated. "Last night might've been fun for you, but it wasn't for me,” she wrote. “I want to make sure you’re aware so maybe the next girl doesn’t have to cry on the ride home.” Ansari responded in surprise and with a brief apology, saying, “Clearly I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.”
Across the internet, two camps of reaction — each born ironically from lived experience — began to emerge in comment pieces and tweets. Women who've faced sexual coercion in the dating world found themselves once again having to explain the concept of enthusiastic consent, while men defended Ansari by claiming he was a victim of “mixed signals”. Yet others, like The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan (with puzzling anachronism) that perhaps all one needs to avoid Grace’s plight was to have some “mad money” ready — “a cab fare in case he got ‘fresh’”.
In a recent opinion piece for the , author Jessica Valenti explains why there is often a dangerous conflation between “bad, sometimes criminal behaviour” with romance. “Traditional ideas about seduction rely on tropes of women witholding sex and men working hard to get it,” she writes. “It’s a narrow notion of heterosexuality – one that does a good job excusing abusive behavior.”
With sobering clarity, Valenti captures why Ansari’s incident was so significant with the following tweet:
In other words, if Grace’s story struck a chord, it’s not so much because of the fact that her abuser is yet another formerly beloved celebrity, but the sheer pervasiveness of men’s inability to read ‘no’ as a sexual cue.
Women are taught to tolerate our distress by making bargains with ourselves and the world. As a Pavlovian reaction to having our experiences diminished, we edit trauma. We minimise it. We are socialised to look for our part to blame in situations, even when the power dynamic is clearly skewed.
In Grace’s case, it took a concerted effort to validate the incident as sexual assault. "I was debating if this was an awkward sexual experience or sexual assault. And that’s why I confronted so many of my friends and listened to what they had to say, because I wanted validation that it was actually bad,” she told Babe.
The sum of sex isn't just about one body part entering into another, but a moment of trust where we allow our physical boundaries to become porous. The full horror of Grace’s experience is in knowing that here is someone emotionally intelligent, who has demonstrated via his work a capacity to respect women — and yet, for some reason — didn’t.
When Grace pushed back with her text, what she also demonstrated was a refusal to buy into the toxic narrative that in some arbitrary, unknowable way, she has co-created that nightmarish experience.
Ansari’s actions may be bitterly disappointing, but we can find hope in the growing conviction of women speaking out, and the fact that we are having this conversation right now, on the borrowed good will of a young woman who believes the time for sexual entitlement is up.
