Reflecting on Aziz Ansari & His Fall from ‘Grace’
A week after winning a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy Series, writer/actor Aziz Ansari was the recipient of something else entirely — a story on feminist website babe entitled “I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life.”
The article detailed an evening between Ansari and an anonymous woman known only as ‘Grace.’ In it, she tells the story of a man who was interested in having sex with her, and willfully ignored signals that she was not interested in having sex with him.
Since then, a number of counter-takes on that original story have been written and discussed, many of them critical of his anonymous accuser. Caitlan Flanagan wrote a piece for The Atlantic, Bari Weiss wrote a similar piece for The New York Times, Sonny Bunch chimed in at The Washington Post, and CNN Headline News’ Ashleigh Banfield added her voice to the chorus as well, essentially saying that ‘Grace’ has “chiseled away at a movement that I, along with all of my sisters in the workplace, have been dreaming of for decades.”
Predictably, these opinions have met with some backlash, on Twitter, on Facebook, and elsewhere. These counter-counter-takes make the point that behaviors fall on a spectrum, and that while Ansari’s behavior certainly wasn’t at Weinstein level, it was a form of everyday objectification that absolutely needs to be discussed as part of the #MeToo/#TimesUp conversation.
This isn’t a counter-counter-counter-take, I promise.
I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this particular story. I wish it was neater, somehow. Easier to sort out. But life is rarely as neat as we’d like it to be. Reading the account from ‘Grace’ on babe and Ansari’s response, I find that I am interested in demonizing neither Aziz Ansari nor his accuser. They’re both human beings, they both see things the way they see them, those accounts are not entirely compatible with one another, and life happens that way sometime.
I do have some interest in figuring out what this particular case study, messy as it is, can teach us going forward. And it seems to me that when life is messy, we need to make things cleaner — in this case, the way that we (mostly men in a heterosexual context, but let’s just say we) obtain consent and also the way that we (mostly women in a heterosexual context, but let’s just say we) either give or withhold consent.
It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard. Before initiating a sexual act with someone, ask a simple and sincere question: “Are you good with this?” It might not fit neatly into the romantic comedy you’ve written for yourself. It might not seem very suave. It’s not a question James Bond ever had to ask. And guess what — you’re not James Bond, and the person you so want to get freaky with is not Pussy Galore.
And there’s some responsibility on the other side. Whether you get the question or not, it’s important to let someone who is initiating sexual contact with you that you’re not into it, and just as important to let them know that you’re very into it, whichever the case may be. Even if no one is asking for your consent, give it. Or withhold it.
Many who are now criticizing ‘Grace’ are saying that if her “verbal and nonverbal cues” weren’t enough to deter his unwanted behavior, that she needed to state a declarative “No,” and are often quick to point out that, by her own accounting, as soon as she did so, Ansari summoned a car to drive her home. Others, who are more apt to defend ‘Grace,’ say that the responsibility to pick up on those cues was his, and that she might not have felt safe to do more. It’s clear that the act of withholding consent comes with a considerable amount of risk, sometimes perceived, and — if perception is reality — always real. This speaks to an obviously tougher set of questions, which essentially boil down to why men objectify (to the point of dehumanization) those that they lust after, and why rape happens.
These are questions that go way beyond Aziz Ansari and ‘Grace.’
And yet, I wonder if the act of giving consent — wild, lusty, unrestrained consent — might be part of the solution. One might argue that rape culture originates, at least in part, in our puritanical mindset, where women aren’t supposed to want sex in the first place, and men are therefore driven to overcome their timidity, by charisma in the best case and by force in the very, very worst case. If that’s a given, then there’s also some risk in giving consent unabashedly. We’ve internalized this notion of a first sexual experience between two people taking the form of some kind of conquest; is it possible for us to rewrite those rules to accommodate two (or more) people who just WANT IT, without shame?
I hope that going forward, ‘Grace’ feels seen and heard by the amount of support that she’s received in the wake of her interview being published. I hope that Aziz Ansari continues to thrive in his career, and also that he is appropriately humbled by this experience, in that he will learn from it, and perhaps his audience will also, one day, experience the benefit of that learning. I hope that the rest of us reflect on what it means to ask for consent, and what it looks like to answer that question, one way or the other — and to prioritize each other’s humanity above all else. I hope that the important conversation we started in 2017 can not only continue but grow, to the point where it becomes impossible for one accusation to cause it all to fall apart. Perhaps we’re already there. I hope so.