https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355

some mixed reactions on twitter tho...

okee dokee

..how paralyzing fear is in a sexual situation, and how it often makes us "comply" with things we really don't want to do because we feel powerless and overwhelmed, folks still say dumb shit like this.

You are not and have never been a woman. You simply don't understand.

And the fact that you don't understand means that its highly likely you've either unwittingly (or not) made a woman feel like this, or you might in the future.

d

she doesn't like red wine but she didn't speak up?

she didn't finish her meal but didn't speak up?

She didn't finish the bottle but didn't speak up

Did she want to go back to his place or nah? She could have left but she didn't speak up.

I get the part about feeling uncomfortable once sex starts and being scared to speak on it but damn.. it's really easy to paint dudes as creeps if you never speak up and roll with everything they do.

This is a pretty easy one to field. Doing what someone asks you to do because you're scared doesn't men you're okay with what's happening...it means you're scared and want to be out of said sotuation and see compliance as a means to make the process faster. Not to mention surviving the encounter.

it seems believable, and the line for me was crossed before the oral sex

iono fam. this one is gonna be hard for a lot of people to ride with.

“It took a really long time for me to validate this as sexual assault,” she told us. “I was debating if this was an awkward sexual experience or sexual assault.”
-----

not playing either side here. but if it was hard for even her to gain clarity that a certain line was crossed...shouldnt there be some level of understanding for why a lot of other people may not 'get it'?

he pointed at his dick and she sucked it
if he wasn't reading her non verbal clues
how was he supposed to know she didn't want to do it?
this just reeks of a bad sexual experience
not sexual assault

i honestly didn't like her from the beginning of her story
complaining that he got her white wine instead of red
ask for fucking red!
that there was half a bottle of wine left and he quickly got the check
say you want to finish your drink! wtf

its like she expected him to read her mind all night long
and never once spoke up

>i honestly didn't like her from the beginning of her story
>complaining that he got her white wine instead of red
>ask for fucking red!

----------

IG @h_n_z

because you'll inevitably hear that you just don't know what it's like to be in the room with a person like that.

and I DO get that I haven't had that experience, and I DO get the pressure young people can feel under when they are with someone they admire in their profession, particularly one as bottlenecked and fickle as Hollywood/comedy.

But this girl bills herself as a photographer; Aziz can't blacklist her photography across the entire world.

When you google his name now, you see women thinking that men are coming to Aziz' defense because these situations are incredibly common and this story is emblematic of the issues with what men consider "normal" sexual encounters. But like I said below, I find the entire scenario completely bizarre, I can't relate to EITHER side, but like you point out...there is a whole lot of her assuming he understands what she's thinking without saying out loud:


"Oh, I wanted red wine."
"Why are you in such a hurry? Do you have work to do?"
"I don't like leaving with wine still on the table."
"I haven't had as good a time as I expected, maybe we'll talk later."
"I'll come up, but only for one more drink. I don't do first night fucks."
"Excuse me, I said I have no interest in having sex with you. Thanks for dinner, goodnight."


I'm not making excuses for Aziz, this night sounds like the worst a person in any sort of power position could act towards someone else, but I just find the entire story a tale of two idiots making bad decisions over the course of several hours. If this story came out in any other year, I think more people would see it the way she initially did, as a poorly executed sexual encounter by both parties.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

if I were Aziz, I'd feel real stupid for being so damn pushy and needy.

just as if I were here, I'd feel silly for thinking he wasn't going to try some shit on the couch when he'd already tried some shit in the kitchen.

again, the more I think this one over, they were both being very dumb and almost wading through the situation in weird out of body roles where they had no control over themselves, one aggressively and the other passively.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

>If this story came out in any other year, I think more people
>would see it the way she initially did, as a poorly executed
>sexual encounter by both parties.

in fact...stories like this *have* come out and trended on social media. and they were discussed/covered in a comedic light. i mean...there are iconic movie scenes like this lol.

But still went back to the crib

Ionno, her version doesn't paint her as a sound decision maker

why even include that?

>i honestly didn't like her from the beginning of her story
>complaining that he got her white wine instead of red
>ask for fucking red!
>that there was half a bottle of wine left and he quickly got
>the check
>say you want to finish your drink! wtf
>
>its like she expected him to read her mind all night long
>and never once spoke up
>

that extended past the sexual encounter. thanks for tuning me into that.

at what point do you say...you know what...this non-verbal shit aint working...maybe i should speak up to get the desired outcome i want?

it's a power play on her part. Don't say shit the whole night and once you leave you get to tell your side of the story and how he was a POS who manipulated the whole night.

you already see people in here (even women) saying the red wine thing and finishing your food made her hard to like.

I think it was done to show Aziz wasn't thinking about her but damn, it's dinner and wine, if you can't say you want a glass of red or to keep eating I have to wonder what your motive is for letting us know this.

Also, while I definitely think Aziz was trying to fuck and probably crossed a line I don't know if this is considered assault.

I just think dudes aren't mind readers and it's real easy to paint someone in a bad light if you silent bob all night. Especially if you text him or tell him you want to chill and he pulls back.

body language can mean anything to anyone.
but no means no.

i aint with it.

the Sex if that's what you're looking for.

There are Way too many talented/willing Sex Workers out there to be putting yourself, and these Women in these situations.

sex work can be fraught for the same reasons, but at least it's another mode of communication

im sure there's a clear difference in their mind between flat out dropping 20k for some ass vs some quid pro quo.

Plus the upper tiered SWers are good at making the experience as real as their client wants

so alot of y'all dudes are having fake intimacy anyway.

you might as well just pay for it.

d

i looked into it at one point on some bucket list shit and they said its honestly not worth it unless you have OD disposable income. they just do it to have that experience of fucking women so fine they'd never give them the time if they met under normal circumstances.

So many men feel like their egos are taking a hit when some real hard core cash needs to hit the pillow.

As old as humanity itself. Pay to play.

plus I just never got the appeal.

I've had a few nights where I was blue balled but I ain't the type to press anyone into sex. Shit ain't that serious.

these celebs tho.. they are used to women throwing themselves at them so it's never a good idea to go on a date expecting them to be a gentleman unless you are on their level (famous or uber successful in their world).

.

Real talk tho, this reads like he was close to getting some but he made a few wrong moves. The finger thing sounds like a great way to turn a woman off.

(The ones who are good at their job)

Spend a good amount of time & effort getting ready and dressed specifically to appeal to YOU (or you can just tell them what to wear)

After initially planning, they're there to do what YOU

That whole experience is geared to YOUR enjoyment.

There's a reason not everyone would be able to be successful at that job.

Consent is still consent.

No is still no.

If this whole story played out with a sex worker instead of Grace, would it mean they'd have no right to feel these same feelings?

Why? Because money? She still would have a right to be uncomfortable, and may have to give back money or whatever, but the feelings would still be valid.

And Aziz didn't want a sex worker, or else maybe he WOULD have paid for it. Maybe he has. But ultimately this is a woman that approached him, who seemed to feel him, and he assumed back that her interest was all inclusive.

I feel for her and her story and experience, but the moral of the story has to be as much "say what you mean/feel" as it is "dudes be less creepy".

If she were INTO it and it was just a play by play of an enjoyed experience, would that put Aziz in better light? I feel like the only thing missing is her "no". She said she didn't want to fuck, and they didn't....but everything else not said "no" to seems to have been on the table and carried out. There are as many reasons for why that consensually the case as to why he'd just be a creep for not picking up on nonverbal communication.

an issue that needs to be addressed, and I think legalization would go a long way in making things better for everyone involved.

However it's a LOT less likely to happen with a SW since (hopefully) before hand you discussed what will happen, the terms and conditions.

It's not going to be a surprise for either person when Sex is expected

Now obviously the Girl/Guy can change their mind (they're giving that Dough back though)

so on the one hand, it is asserted that paying for sex would make it feel "fake" or "transactional".

However, also seems that it would be "safer" for the sex worker because there would be a communication up front about what all parties are consenting to.

It is almost like the answer for safer consensual sex is to communicate that up front, but that men might not feel endeared to the communication if they are not also entitled to the outcome that THEY dictate.

Maybe.

Like if you were gonna imagine a scenario aziz would fuck up in.. this would literally be the scenario

it's pretty easy to tell when a woman's unsure. as soon as she's giving off resistance, its time to stop.

I've hit on men (and women) and knew when they weren't into me even if they didn't say it....it was so damn obvious

that shit hurts tho...but still. i stopped.

d

because they weren't into you when you hit on them and how they felt violated by your words.

but I would call those people wrong too.

i think you can be oblivious to non-verbal queues if she's into you but her body language when she's *not* into it is easy enough to read

but the type of dudes whose moves are to grab her hand and put it on his dick are of a mindstate that i'll never really understand.

dick 5 to 7 times...SHE'S NOT WITH IT.

Always weird when you read a story and can't relate to none of it. From telling a date what they should wear to being a celebrity to being a woman to being so forward with a desire to fuck to not feeling comfortable flat out saying "I don't fuck on first dates" to just reaching for the throat/pussy to just giving oral to get it out of the way to walking around an apartment naked with a stranger I don't want to be naked around to pushing for (or refusing) sex more than once in a single encounter to...man, literally ALL OF IT.


glad she let him know immediately with the texts. weird (or...not?) how a lot of these major comedic voices for social issues seem to be speaking from experience and analyzing their own behavior in a sort of meta third person way.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

that's the only solution

"how about not being a pussy hound and just letting it happen organically?" requires too much common sense and decency

these guys have to flat out say "we're going back to my place to fuck", a statement that puts everything on the table and doesnt amount to sexual harassment

of course women always have the right to agree then back out, at which point the man has to completely stop

but "he made verbal sexual advances too soon" sounds way less worse than physically going for it and just assuming she's game

I'm glad she let him know how she felt afterwards so he could analyze the situation and how things could have gone different. You can't be on some team #TimesUp but when a situation like this occurs you just keep it moving. Part of that work is really looking at your self and your behavior and the impact it has on others.

It's wack that she felt she couldn't stand up for herself in those moments of duress.

He's wack but she went back to his place she had to know what was possibly gonna go down.

And don't blow dudes you have issues with. 🤷🏽‍♀️

I need to know more. So far it's pathetic on both ends for me. Especially him. I feel like it's premature for this article IMO but it works for the journalists timing. The picture they painted of him seems premature and unfair since they are going off of one perspective of the story. Kinda unfair to paint the picture of "someone who took advantage", I get painting the picture of a grown man with pathetic moves tho. But let's also paint the picture of a bit of blind ignorance of going upstairs on a first date and what his intentions were when asking her to do so. Pretty sure he wasn't excited to show her the décor.


----------

IG @h_n_z

>Pretty sure he
>wasn't excited to show her the décor.
>
>
>----------
>
>IG @h_n_z

I actually wouldn't have been surprised at all if that's all he wanted to talk about.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Lol cmon

and he writes those characters, so yea, I'd think fans of his (like this woman, who watched his standup and read his book) would understand that his Dev character, and even Tom Haverford in many ways, was an extension of Aziz in his personal life.


I'm not saying it's SMART or even entirely RATIONAL, but his standup act and his characters on TV are very clearly supposed to be portrayals of his own experiences and thoughts. I mean, Aziz may be the least dynamic actor central to a stellar comedy show since Jerry Seinfeld, if not EVER IN THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION. Him winning an acting award of any kind was wild stupid.


But he's a good writer, and the things that he writes - and the characters that he writes - don't come off as the sort to chase the pussy like Pepe Le Pew. I think it's fair as a fan to assume he doesn't act the opposite in his private life - just as I think it was fair to enjoy Louis CK while understanding that this guy likely jerks off in a lot of awkward situations, given his comedy and the characters he plays, and thus be less surprised by the story about him than the story about Aziz.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

ST ENTIRE FU.

Because she went back to his place she's supposed to have sex?

Shut your clown ass up. So ridiculously offensive.

If thats what you deciphered then you just want to act ignorant what it means when a guy or woman asks you up stairs on a first date. Is it automatic sex because someone agrees to go back to your or her apartment? No, but he or she is definitely signalling they want the date to continue and they are thinking a possibility of sex.





----------

IG @h_n_z

>If thats what you deciphered then you just want to act
>ignorant what it means when a guy or woman asks you up stairs
>on a first date. Is it automatic sex because someone agrees to
>go back to your or her apartment? No, but he or she is
>definitely signalling they want the date to continue and they
>are thinking a possibility of sex.

FOH. Me going back to a guy's house does not mean I'm thinking the possibility of sex. What the hell?! And if I *did* have sex on the brain, it doesn't mean I'm fucking obligated to fuck him if I go there. I get to decide what happens irrespective of fucktards like you deciding that 'I know what's up' if I go to a guy's house. Disgusting.

But if you don't think their intentions aren't trying to create a scenario of possible sex then you are blind. Real fucking blind. Nobody is in here saying you are obligated to do so, but do not act naive to the person's intentions. You probably think all your platonic friends wouldn't even consider fucking if you offered. Stop trying to insist we are saying because a guy has intentions you have to follow thru nobody in here is saying that so stop making that argument.


----------

IG @h_n_z

We seem to agree so why is this a discussion?

no one said you are supposed to but if you go back to a dudes apartment on the first date it's certainly a possibility that one could think sex was on the brain(s).

which is why IMO it's not a good idea for a first date AND if it happens you should be ready to speak up if you don't want sex.

She said no.. and he stopped.

----------

IG @h_n_z

What does that have to do with me?

have a good one

and the dude kept saying something along the lines of "ignore, persist" in relation to the woman giving hints that she was unsure or skeptical about continuing. Of course it's a PUA video, but the video ends with him taking the girl to his apt and you hear sex sounds. Some of yall might remember it.
It sounds like he watched that video.
Thing is, most guys will say that kind of thing only works if you're attractive or have alotta money. There's definitely more to it than that.

Overall tho, ignoring people who sound like they're going to turn you down is a tactic used very often in life and most often in sales. We've all been there... "yeah that's a little steep, don't think I can afford it" gets met with "well we have payment plans, and you said you needed this item, the price will rise tomorrow, so would you like to use Visa or Mastercard?" You think you were clear, yet the the salesperson just tries another angle of persuasion before making the offer again. That interaction lasts as long as you entertain it. But if you refuse to end the interaction, it will be uncomfortable. You have to decide that your peace and boundaries are important enough to you that you will walk away or hang up the phone. Many people hate those interactions, not because they're in danger but because they hate saying 'no' definitively or simply hate having to SHOW anger in the moment they feel it, especially to someone who's being so "polite.". Strangely, they'd feel some sense of guilt for hurting this "polite" person's feelings, even though that politeness is really only buffering aggression. Or in the area of peer pressure, you hate to snap at someone you care about... someone who's been kind to you so many times and vice versa. The only "fear" here is that you may offend someone you care about and possibly ruin a good relationship or that you'll be viewed as the friend who's no fun.
But what about when that fear of showing anger and fear of ruining a relationship is coupled with a fear of being physically violated in an intimate setting for someone who knows they're physically outmatched? Keep the following quote in mind as I proceed:

"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."

That's not necessarily "tough to answer" for a clear-headed person with healthy boundaries. The answer is that you don't want to fuck him at all. But the question is, why couldn't she say that?
I'm not a woman, but I haven't always been a grown man, and I know that feeling of paralysis from the abuse in my past. There were ways I tried to prevent abuse, such as practicing saying "no" and expressing feelings firmly, practicing standing up for myself (that's not an easy habit to get into if you're trained NOT to from birth) or exiting uncomfortable situations without allowing others to disrespect me multiple times, or not being alone with someone immediately after meeting them... until I trust them. Ironically, I tend to practice these things now (albeit b/c Black men are most likely to be falsely accused of rape). None of these rules seem to have been followed in the situation at hand. That's not to say she's wrong... she's human and she may be lacking boundaries, courage, or survival instincts... or it just takes too much offensive behavior to get her to the point of being offended enough to walk away... and maybe she just didn't trust him not to harm her (but that goes back to not being alone with someone so soon). This is why she couldn't just say "I don't want to fuck you, I'm leaving." Ftr, his behavior as described, sounds like that of a scumbag. Yet, this is the behavior this society values... people who pressure situations and "make things happen" even when they look unlikely... those who "persist against the odds." Not because it's misogynistic, but because it pays off sometimes... b/c plenty people of both sexes like it that way. What we don't value enough is knowing when to quit. Since plenty people of both sexes like it that way, it's not likely to stop anytime soon. I play it safe on my end by not pushing action, even if she seems like the type to "make you work for it." Be 100% so there's no guesswork and no games. Women have to play it safe on their end too. If that's "victim-blaming" then so be it. Much of life involves making safety provisions. No, they aren't fail-proof, but they damn sure help. Many will say her story is important because it'll help others tell theirs. I think her story is also important because the way he ended the dinner told her not to go back to his place. These are signs women might wanna pay attention to.

"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.”

Pay attention to weird stuff like this. Don't be afraid to ask questions like "You don't want the wine?" or to take this small moment to assert yourself like "I'm not done here yet." Predators are watching for a lack of assertion on your part in ALL things (trust me, I lived with one). It might save your life. If you don't care about your life, then hey, make zero provisions for your safety and take no thought of how your action (or inaction) may be setting of a predator's radar.

...so much of this resonated with me.

https://media.giphy.com/media/NKYhvtKmAyXf2/giphy.gif

The 34 year-old comedian responded to the claim on Sunday night through his publicist.

“In September of last year, I met a woman at a party. We exchanged numbers. We texted back and forth and eventually went on a date. We went out to dinner, and afterwards we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual,” Ansari said.

“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.”

“I continue to support the movement that is happening in our culture,” he said. “It is necessary and long overdue.”

because no woman should have to feel like she should be silent.

On the other hand, if Aziz was genuinely upset that he crossed the line and apologized, should this have gone public? He's not right for not reading the signs....but is there even a proper way to make amends for that?


---------------------------------------


---------------------------------------

now you can't even order wine without it being used against you after the fact.

you'd find a way to navigate that didn't put you creep situations since the alerts are on red right now.

you never know these days.

seems like any sexual encounter can be used against you on social media.

I would go back through my old roster tho.. can't risk my future by ordering the wrong wine.

out with the old. I don't like too much backtracking.

another recently divorced dude at the office said his needs (older established women) are the opposite of his desires (younger, want babies). I'd prolly be in that conundrum.

The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari
Allegations against the comedian are proof that women are angry, temporarily powerful—and very, very dangerous.


Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

CAITLIN FLANAGAN

Sexual mores in the West have changed so rapidly over the past hundred years that by the time you reach 50, intimate accounts of commonplace sexual events of the young seem like science fiction: you understand the vocabulary and the sentence structure, but all of the events take place in outer space. You’re just too old.

This was my experience reading the account of one young woman’s alleged sexual encounter with Aziz Ansari, published by the website Babe this weekend: the world in which it constituted an episode of sexual assault was so far from my own two experiences of near date rape (which took place, respectively, during the Carter and Reagan administrations, roughly in between the kidnapping of the Iran hostages and the start of the Falklands War) that I just couldn’t pick up the tune. But, like the recent New Yorker story “Cat Person,”—about a soulless and disappointing hook-up between two people who mostly knew each other through texts—the account has proven deeply resonant and meaningful to a great number of young women, who have responded in large numbers on social media, saying that it is frighteningly and infuriatingly similar to crushing experiences of their own. It is therefore worth reading and, in its way, is an important contribution to the present conversation.

Here’s how the story goes: A young woman, who is given the identity-protecting name “Grace” in the story, was excited to encounter Ansari at a party in Los Angeles, and even though he initially brushed her off, when he saw that they both had the same kind of old-fashioned camera, he paid attention to her and got her number. He texted her when they both got back to New York asking if she wanted to go out, and she was so excited she spent a lot of time choosing her outfit and texting pictures of it to friends. They had a glass of wine at his apartment and then he rushed her though dinner at an expensive restaurant and brought her back to his apartment. Within minutes of returning, she was sitting on the kitchen counter and he was—apparently consensually—performing oral sex on her (here the older reader’s eyes widen, because this was hardly the first move in the “one night stands” of yesteryear), but then went on, per her account, to pressure her for sex in a variety of ways that were not honorable. Eventually, overcome by her emotions at the way the night was going, she told him, “You guys are all the fucking same” and left crying. I thought it was the most significant line in the story: this has happened to her many times before. What led her to believe that this time would be different?

* * *

I was a teenager in the late 1970s, long past the great awakening (sexual intercourse began in 1963, which was plenty of time for me), but as far away from Girl Power as World War I was from the Tet Offensive. The great girl-shaping institutions, significantly the magazines and advice books and novels that I devoured, were decades away from being handed over to actual girls and young women to write and edit, and they were still filled with the cautionary advice and moralistic codes of the 1950s. With the exception of the explicit physical details, stories like Grace’s—which usually appeared in the form of “as told to’s,” and which were probably the invention of editors and the work product of middle-aged, women writers—were so common as to be almost regular features of these cultural products. In fact, the bitterly disappointed girl crying in a taxi muttering “they’re all the same” was almost a trope. Make a few changes to Grace’s story and it would fit right into the narrative of those books and magazines, which would have dissected what happened to her in a pitiless way.


When she saw Ansari at the party, she was excited by his celebrity—“Grace said it was surreal to be meeting up with Ansari, a successful comedian and major celebrity”—which the magazines would have told us was “shallow;” he brushed her off, but she kept after him, which they would have called “desperate;” doing so meant ignoring her actual date of the evening, which they would have called cruel. Agreeing to meet at his apartment—instead of expecting her to come to her place to pick her up—they would have called unwise, ditto drinking with him alone. Drinking, we were told, could lead to a girl’s getting “carried away” which was the way female sexual desire was always characterized in these things—as in, “she got carried away the night of the prom.” As for what happened sexually, the writers would have blamed her completely: what was she thinking, getting drunk with an older man she hardly knew, after revealing her eagerness to get close to him? The signal rule about dating, from its inception in the 1920s to right around the time of the Falklands war, was that if anything bad happened to a girl on a date, it was her fault.

Those magazines didn’t prepare teenage girls for sports or STEM or huge careers; the kind of world-conquering, taking-numbers strength that is the common language of the most middle-of-the road cultural products aimed at today’s girls was totally absent. But in one essential way they reminded us that we were strong in a way that so many modern girls are weak. They told us over and over again that if a man tried to push you into anything you didn’t want, even just a kiss, you told him flat out you weren’t doing it. If he kept going, you got away from him. You were always to have “mad money” with you: cab fare in case he got “fresh” and then refused to drive you home. They told you to slap him if you had to; they told to get out of the car and start wailing if you had to. They told you to do whatever it took to stop him from using your body in any way you didn’t want, and under no circumstances to go down without a fight. In so many ways, compared with today’s young women, we were weak; we were being prepared for being wives and mothers, not occupants of the C-Suite. But as far as getting away from a man who was trying to pressure us into for sex we didn’t want; we were strong.

Was Grace frozen, terrified, stuck? No. She tells us that she wanted something from Ansari and she was trying to figure out how to get it. She wanted affection, kindness, attention. Perhaps she hoped for chance to maybe even become the famous man’s girlfriend. He wasn’t interested. What she felt afterward—rejected yet another time, by yet another man—was regret. 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. Together, the two women may have destroyed Ansari’s career, which is now the punishment for every kind of male sexual misconduct, from the grotesque to the disappointing.

Twenty-four hours ago—this is the speed at which we are now operating—Aziz Ansari was a man whom many people admired and whose work, although very well paid, also performed a social good. He was the first exposure many young Americans had to a Muslim man who was aspirational, funny, immersed in the same culture that they are. Now he has been—in a professional sense—assassinated, on the basis of one woman’s anonymous account. Many of the college-educated white women who so vocally support this movement are entirely on her side. The feminist writer and speaker Jessica Valenti tweeted, “A lot of men will read that post about Aziz Ansari and see an everyday, reasonable sexual interaction. But part of what women are saying right now is that what the culture considers ‘normal’ sexual encounters are not working for us, and oftentimes harmful.”

I thought it would take a little longer for the hit squad of privileged young white women to open fire on brown-skinned men. I had assumed that, on the basis of intersectionality and all that, they’d stay laser focused on college-educated white men for another few months. But we’re at warp speed now, and the revolution—in many ways so good and so important—is starting to sweep up all sorts of people into its conflagration: the monstrous, the cruel, and the simply unlucky. Apparently there is a whole country full of young women who don’t know how to call a cab, and who have spent a lot of time picking out pretty outfits for dates they hoped would be nights to remember. They’re angry and temporarily powerful and last night they destroyed a man who didn’t deserve it.

she going way off the woman playbook w/ this shit

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

if you feel out of touch and only half understand intersectionality, maybe sit this one out for a bit...?

if you want to explain it to me i'm here for it, but i went through her feeds and her previous articles. i think she's all over the place.

The problem is that those who claim to adhere
to the philosophy are doing it mad incorrectly
as they fail to understand the very systems they
claim to be against and how those systems operate.

that last paragraph is fucked up imo, and everything before it is full of equivocations.

validate your accusations.

>that last paragraph is fucked up imo, and everything before
>it is full of equivocations.


What is fucked up about the last paragraph in your
judgment and WHY is it fucked up?

What are the equivocations she's making in the whole
piece and HOW are they equivocations?

educate me

>validate your accusations.
>
>>that last paragraph is fucked up imo, and everything before
>>it is full of equivocations.
>
>
>What is fucked up about the last paragraph in your
>judgment and WHY is it fucked up?

well, it's victim blaming. it's throwing a whole generation of women under the bus based on one story. and intersectionality doesn't mean we pit women and men of color against each other in misery poker. we don't even know what really happened or the fall out for aziz yet, but there are solutions here that don't involve winners and losers.

this fucking story isn't going to be the straw that broke the back. she wouldn't have pulled this shit in a think piece on bill cosby.

>What are the equivocations she's making in the whole
>piece and HOW are they equivocations?

First paragraph, she can't relate...second paragraph...but wait it's important and valid, then the shift to "in it's way" which is textbook equivocation....third paragraph, a run down of an assault that ends with the author moralizing about why the woman is stupid for thinking this time would be different.

The fourth paragraph is total bullshit and fiction..."But as far as getting away from a man who was trying to pressure us into for sex we didn’t want; we were strong." There's no data that suggests date rape, let alone marital rape and sexual assault from strangers, is something that millenials are more susceptible to than previous generations.

The rest follows from that false premise, with a misreading of intersectionality and some false sanctimony about the right way to be empowered and a journalist. I don't like the tone and narrative in the original story either, but...fuck, not like this.

>>>that last paragraph is fucked up imo, and everything before
>>>it is full of equivocations.
>>
>>
>>What is fucked up about the last paragraph in your
>>judgment and WHY is it fucked up?
>
>well, it's victim blaming.


This accusation is coming to mean "you said a person has a responsibility to make provisions for their own safety" which isn't a bad thing to say at all. If that isn't what you mean, then what DO you mean, and how does the article fall in line with what you mean?


>it's throwing a whole generation of
>women under the bus based on one story.


What does she say about the generation that you disagree with?


>and intersectionality
>doesn't mean we pit women and men of color against each other
>in misery poker.



Intersectionality is just a framework. It's the proclaimed practitioners who play "misery poker" constantly. But did the author say intersectionality is misery poker between men and women of color? Where are you getting this idea?



>we don't even know what really happened or
>the fall out for aziz yet,




Yeah I'm with you there. But there's a reason this very post's title is "and down goes aziz." All it takes is the accusation to ruin someone. We've seen this over and over.





>but there are solutions here that
>don't involve winners and losers.



That's an interesting thing to say when he apologized directly to her cell and this is still a national story. The only thing he should lose is his aggressive attitude toward his dates, in the case that this story is all true.



>this fucking story isn't going to be the straw that broke the
>back. she wouldn't have pulled this shit in a think piece on
>bill cosby.



What? Bill Cosby was also accused of raping an amount of women in double digits. "Accused" being the operative word, but still. I think the point here is that such a situation is very different from this one.



>>What are the equivocations she's making in the whole
>>piece and HOW are they equivocations?
>
>First paragraph, she can't relate...second paragraph...but
>wait it's important and valid, then the shift to "in it's way"
>which is textbook equivocation....third paragraph, a run down
>of an assault that ends with the author moralizing about why
>the woman is stupid for thinking this time would be
>different.



This sounds like you're reading stuff into the piece that isn't there. She didn't say it was valid. She said it was "worth reading" and "an important contribution to the present conversation." You took that as her validating the story, when it's not. It appears to me that she's saying it's important because it reveals the state of things. This is the point of the term "in its way" here... and I think the rest of the piece fully backs that up. That's not equivocation at all. It should actually be very clear to anyone who understood her piece. She also didn't say the woman was stupid. She just asked why the woman thought this time would be different if this had happened to her many times before. Why is that not a valid question?



>The fourth paragraph is total bullshit and fiction..."But as
>far as getting away from a man who was trying to pressure us
>into for sex we didn’t want; we were strong." There's no
>data that suggests date rape, let alone marital rape and
>sexual assault from strangers, is something that millenials
>are more susceptible to than previous generations.



You're not sure about those stats, are you? This article would disagree with you http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35513052 Furthermore, there isn't a lot of research on marital rape, as it was even considered a crime in all 50 states until 1994 or so.



>The rest follows from that false premise, with a misreading of
>intersectionality and some false sanctimony about the right
>way to be empowered and a journalist. I don't like the tone
>and narrative in the original story either, but...fuck, not
>like this.


As I stated above, intersectionality is a framework. The majority of those who claim to practice it are the problem, because they throw data around gendered racism out the window. That's probably a discussion for another day. At any rate, if you don't like the tone and narrative of the original story, what is she doing wrong in her criticism of it?

>if you feel out of touch and only half understand
>intersectionality, maybe sit this one out for a bit...?

I had a post all written out but junked it since i didnt have time to really engage a fee days ago. But it was based off Rose Mcgowan’s racial fuckups since she became the face of the anti-abuse movement, piggy backed off how she went in on the Golden Globes for being fake when it was a night whre female POC’s ruled (along with the subsequent Oprah flack for apparently being abuse complicit, lol)

Basically that the current mainstream feminist movements (and other current white fronted activist movements) are tainted by white supremacy and they need to do a better job and recognize how they fucking up. Ill wait for another example outside of this mess of a situation but intersectionality is a problem because it seems to be factored in only by POC activists, primarily black women, while white liberals just talk the talk. Like how the current trans movement pretty much ignores the massacres happening in various inner cities with police sanctioned murders (but that issue is at the forefront of various POC lead movements, blacklives, black feminists in general, etc)

but it's not even a paragraph. it feels like she's throwing in aziz's race to prop up her other issues with young privileged women. and much of her beef isn't really connected to their privilege, but their generational perspectives.

damn, that writer is gonna get it. given her tone in the article, she probably doesn't care though.

Since the fraught politics of the time might have non subscribers hitting the bottom of their New Yorker allotments for the month (again, it's pretty long):

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/cat-person

Margot met Robert on a Wednesday night toward the end of her fall semester. She was working behind the concession stand at the artsy movie theatre downtown when he came in and bought a large popcorn and a box of Red Vines.

“That’s an . . . unusual choice,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually sold a box of Red Vines before.”

Flirting with her customers was a habit she’d picked up back when she worked as a barista, and it helped with tips. She didn’t earn tips at the movie theatre, but the job was boring otherwise, and she did think that Robert was cute. Not so cute that she would have, say, gone up to him at a party, but cute enough that she could have drummed up an imaginary crush on him if he’d sat across from her during a dull class—though she was pretty sure that he was out of college, in his mid-twenties at least. He was tall, which she liked, and she could see the edge of a tattoo peeking out from beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt. But he was on the heavy side, his beard was a little too long, and his shoulders slumped forward slightly, as though he were protecting something.

Robert did not pick up on her flirtation. Or, if he did, he showed it only by stepping back, as though to make her lean toward him, try a little harder. “Well,” he said. “O.K., then.” He pocketed his change.

But the next week he came into the movie theatre again, and bought another box of Red Vines. “You’re getting better at your job,” he told her. “You managed not to insult me this time.”

She shrugged. “I’m up for a promotion, so,” she said.

After the movie, he came back to her. “Concession-stand girl, give me your phone number,” he said, and, surprising herself, she did.

From that small exchange about Red Vines, over the next several weeks they built up an elaborate scaffolding of jokes via text, riffs that unfolded and shifted so quickly that she sometimes had a hard time keeping up. He was very clever, and she found that she had to work to impress him. Soon she noticed that when she texted him he usually texted her back right away, but if she took more than a few hours to respond his next message would always be short and wouldn’t include a question, so it was up to her to re-initiate the conversation, which she always did. A few times, she got distracted for a day or so and wondered if the exchange would die out altogether, but then she’d think of something funny to tell him or she’d see a picture on the Internet that was relevant to their conversation, and they’d start up again. She still didn’t know much about him, because they never talked about anything personal, but when they landed two or three good jokes in a row there was a kind of exhilaration to it, as if they were dancing.

Then, one night during reading period, she was complaining about how all the dining halls were closed and there was no food in her room because her roommate had raided her care package, and he offered to buy her some Red Vines to sustain her. At first, she deflected this with another joke, because she really did have to study, but he said, “No, I’m serious, stop fooling around and come now,” so she put a jacket over her pajamas and met him at the 7-Eleven.

It was about eleven o’clock. He greeted her without ceremony, as though he saw her every day, and took her inside to choose some snacks. The store didn’t have Red Vines, so he bought her a Cherry Coke Slurpee and a bag of Doritos and a novelty lighter shaped like a frog with a cigarette in its mouth.

“Thank you for my presents,” she said, when they were back outside. Robert was wearing a rabbit-fur hat that came down over his ears and a thick, old-fashioned down jacket. She thought it was a good look for him, if a little dorky; the hat heightened his lumberjack aura, and the heavy coat hid his belly and the slightly sad slump of his shoulders.

“You’re welcome, concession-stand girl,” he said, though of course he knew her name by then. She thought he was going to go in for a kiss and prepared to duck and offer him her cheek, but instead of kissing her on the mouth he took her by the arm and kissed her gently on the forehead, as though she were something precious. “Study hard, sweetheart,” he said. “I will see you soon.”

On the walk back to her dorm, she was filled with a sparkly lightness that she recognized as the sign of an incipient crush.

While she was home over break, they texted nearly non-stop, not only jokes but little updates about their days. They started saying good morning and good night, and when she asked him a question and he didn’t respond right away she felt a jab of anxious yearning. She learned that Robert had two cats, named Mu and Yan, and together they invented a complicated scenario in which her childhood cat, Pita, would send flirtatious texts to Yan, but whenever Pita talked to Mu she was formal and cold, because she was jealous of Mu’s relationship with Yan.

“Why are you texting all the time?” Margot’s stepdad asked her at dinner. “Are you having an affair with someone?”

“Yes,” Margot said. “His name is Robert, and I met him at the movie theatre. We’re in love, and we’re probably going to get married.”

“Hmm,” her stepdad said. “Tell him we have some questions for him.”

“My parents are asking about u,” Margot texted, and Robert sent her back a smiley-face emoji whose eyes were hearts.

When Margot returned to campus, she was eager to see Robert again, but he turned out to be surprisingly hard to pin down. “Sorry, busy week at work,” he replied. “I promise I will c u soon.” Margot didn’t like this; it felt as if the dynamic had shifted out of her favor, and when eventually he did ask her to go to a movie she agreed right away.

The movie he wanted to see was playing at the theatre where she worked, but she suggested that they see it at the big multiplex just outside town instead; students didn’t go there very often, because you needed to drive. Robert came to pick her up in a muddy white Civic with candy wrappers spilling out of the cup holders. On the drive, he was quieter than she’d expected, and he didn’t look at her very much. Before five minutes had gone by, she became wildly uncomfortable, and, as they got on the highway, it occurred to her that he could take her someplace and rape and murder her; she hardly knew anything about him, after all.

Just as she thought this, he said, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to murder you,” and she wondered if the discomfort in the car was her fault, because she was acting jumpy and nervous, like the kind of girl who thought she was going to get murdered every time she went on a date.

“It’s O.K.—you can murder me if you want,” she said, and he laughed and patted her knee. But he was still disconcertingly quiet, and all her bubbling attempts at making conversation bounced right off him. At the theatre, he made a joke to the cashier at the concession stand about Red Vines, which fell flat in a way that embarrassed everyone involved, but Margot most of all.

During the movie, he didn’t hold her hand or put his arm around her, so by the time they were back in the parking lot she was pretty sure that he had changed his mind about liking her. She was wearing leggings and a sweatshirt, and that might have been the problem. When she got into the car, he’d said, “Glad to see you dressed up for me,” which she’d assumed was a joke, but maybe she actually had offended him by not seeming to take the date seriously enough, or something. He was wearing khakis and a button-down shirt.

“Once I start writing a poem, I can’t stop.”

“So, do you want to go get a drink?” he asked when they got back to the car, as if being polite were an obligation that had been imposed on him. It seemed obvious to Margot that he was expecting her to say no and that, when she did, they wouldn’t talk again. That made her sad, not so much because she wanted to continue spending time with him as because she’d had such high expectations for him over break, and it didn’t seem fair that things had fallen apart so quickly.

“We could go get a drink, I guess?” she said.

“If you want,” he said.

“If you want” was such an unpleasant response that she sat silently in the car until he poked her leg and said, “What are you sulking about?”

“I’m not sulking,” she said. “I’m just a little tired.”

“I can take you home.”

“No, I could use a drink, after that movie.” Even though it had been playing at the mainstream theatre, the film he’d chosen was a very depressing drama about the Holocaust, so inappropriate for a first date that when he suggested it she said, “Lol r u serious,” and he made some joke about how he was sorry that he’d misjudged her taste and he could take her to a romantic comedy instead.

But now, when she said that about the movie, he winced a little, and a totally different interpretation of the night’s events occurred to her. She wondered if perhaps he’d been trying to impress her by suggesting the Holocaust movie, because he didn’t understand that a Holocaust movie was the wrong kind of “serious” movie with which to impress the type of person who worked at an artsy movie theatre, the type of person he probably assumed she was. Maybe, she thought, her texting “lol r u serious” had hurt him, had intimidated him and made him feel uncomfortable around her. The thought of this possible vulnerability touched her, and she felt kinder toward him than she had all night.
When he asked her where she wanted to go for a drink, she named the place where she usually hung out, but he made a face and said that it was in the student ghetto and he’d take her somewhere better. They went to a bar she’d never been to, an underground speakeasy type of place, with no sign announcing its presence. There was a line to get inside, and, as they waited, she grew fidgety trying to figure out how to tell him what she needed to tell him, but she couldn’t, so when the bouncer asked to see her I.D. she just handed it to him. The bouncer hardly even looked at it; he just smirked and said, “Yeah, no,” and waved her to the side, as he gestured toward the next group of people in line.

Robert had gone ahead of her, not noticing what was playing out behind him. “Robert,” she said quietly. But he didn’t turn around. Finally, someone in line who’d been paying attention tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to her, marooned on the sidewalk.

She stood, abashed, as he came back over to her. “Sorry!” she said. “This is so embarrassing.”

“How old are you?” he demanded.

“I’m twenty,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “I thought you said you were older.”

“I told you I was a sophomore!” she said. Standing outside the bar, having been rejected in front of everyone, was humiliating enough, and now Robert was looking at her as if she’d done something wrong.

“But you did that—what do you call it? That gap year,” he objected, as though this were an argument he could win.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” she said helplessly. “I’m twenty.” And then, absurdly, she started to feel tears stinging her eyes, because somehow everything had been ruined and she couldn’t understand why this was all so hard.

But, when Robert saw her face crumpling, a kind of magic happened. All the tension drained out of his posture; he stood up straight and wrapped his bearlike arms around her. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “Oh, honey, it’s O.K., it’s all right. Please don’t feel bad.” She let herself be folded against him, and she was flooded with the same feeling she’d had outside the 7-Eleven—that she was a delicate, precious thing he was afraid he might break. He kissed the top of her head, and she laughed and wiped her tears away.

“I can’t believe I’m crying because I didn’t get into a bar,” she said. “You must think I’m such an idiot.” But she knew he didn’t think that, from the way he was gazing at her; in his eyes, she could see how pretty she looked, smiling through her tears in the chalky glow of the streetlight, with a few flakes of snow coming down.
He kissed her then, on the lips, for real; he came for her in a kind of lunging motion and practically poured his tongue down her throat. It was a terrible kiss, shockingly bad; Margot had trouble believing that a grown man could possibly be so bad at kissing. It seemed awful, yet somehow it also gave her that tender feeling toward him again, the sense that even though he was older than her, she knew something he didn’t.

When he was done kissing her, he took her hand firmly and led her to a different bar, where there were pool tables and pinball machines and sawdust on the floor and no one checking I.D.s at the door. In one of the booths, she saw the grad student who’d been her English T.A. her freshman year.

“Should I get you a vodka soda?” Robert asked, which she thought was maybe supposed to be a joke about the kind of drink college girls liked, though she’d never had a vodka soda. She actually was a little anxious about what to order; at the places she went to, they only carded people at the bar, so the kids who were twenty-one or had good fake I.D.s usually brought pitchers of P.B.R. or Bud Light back to share with the others. She wasn’t sure if those brands were ones that Robert would make fun of, so, instead of specifying, she said, “I’ll just have a beer.”
With the drinks in front of him and the kiss behind him, and also maybe because she had cried, Robert became much more relaxed, more like the witty person she knew through his texts. As they talked, she became increasingly sure that what she’d interpreted as anger or dissatisfaction with her had, in fact, been nervousness, a fear that she wasn’t having a good time. He kept coming back to her initial dismissal of the movie, making jokes that glanced off it and watching her closely to see how she responded. He teased her about her highbrow taste, and said how hard it was to impress her because of all the film classes she’d taken, even though he knew she’d taken only one summer class in film. He joked about how she and the other employees at the artsy theatre probably sat around and made fun of the people who went to the mainstream theatre, where they didn’t even serve wine, and some of the movies were in imax 3-D.

Margot laughed along with the jokes he was making at the expense of this imaginary film-snob version of her, though nothing he said seemed quite fair, since she was the one who’d actually suggested that they see the movie at the Quality 16. Although now, she realized, maybe that had hurt Robert’s feelings, too. She’d thought it was clear that she just didn’t want to go on a date where she worked, but maybe he’d taken it more personally than that; maybe he’d suspected that she was ashamed to be seen with him. She was starting to think that she understood him—how sensitive he was, how easily he could be wounded—and that made her feel closer to him, and also powerful, because once she knew how to hurt him she also knew how he could be soothed. She asked him lots of questions about the movies he liked, and she spoke self-deprecatingly about the movies at the artsy theatre that she found boring or incomprehensible; she told him about how much her older co-workers intimidated her, and how she sometimes worried that she wasn’t smart enough to form her own opinions on anything. The effect of this on him was palpable and immediate, and she felt as if she were petting a large, skittish animal, like a horse or a bear, skillfully coaxing it to eat from her hand.

By her third beer, she was thinking about what it would be like to have sex with Robert. Probably it would be like that bad kiss, clumsy and excessive, but imagining how excited he would be, how hungry and eager to impress her, she felt a twinge of desire pluck at her belly, as distinct and painful as the snap of an elastic band against her skin.

When they’d finished that round of drinks, she said, boldly, “Should we get out of here, then?,” and he seemed briefly hurt, as if he thought she was cutting the date short, but she took his hand and pulled him up, and the look on his face when he realized what she was saying, and the obedient way he trailed her out of the bar, gave her that elastic-band snap again, as did, oddly, the fact that his palm was slick beneath hers.

Outside, she presented herself to him again for kissing, but, to her surprise, he only pecked her on the mouth. “You’re drunk,” he said, accusingly.

“No, I’m not,” she said, though she was. She pushed her body against his, feeling tiny beside him, and he let out a great shuddering sigh, as if she were something too bright and painful to look at, and that was sexy, too, being made to feel like a kind of irresistible temptation.

“I’m taking you home, lightweight,” he said, shepherding her to the car. Once they were inside it, though, she leaned into him again, and after a little while, by lightly pulling back when he pushed his tongue too far down her throat, she was able to get him to kiss her in the softer way that she liked, and soon after that she was straddling him, and she could feel the small log of his erection straining against his pants. Whenever it rolled beneath her weight, he let out these fluttery, high-pitched moans that she couldn’t help feeling were a little melodramatic, and then suddenly he pushed her off him and turned the key in the ignition.
“Making out in the front seat like a teen-ager,” he said, in mock disgust. Then he added, “I’d have thought you’d be too old for that, now that you’re twenty.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Where do you want to go, then?”

“Your place?”

“Um, that won’t really work. Because of my roommate?”

“Oh, right. You live in the dorms,” he said, as though that were something she should apologize for.

“Where do you live?” she asked.

“I live in a house.”

“Can I . . . come over?”

“You can.”

The house was in a pretty, wooded neighborhood not too far from campus and had a string of cheerful white fairy lights across the doorway. Before he got out of the car, he said, darkly, like a warning, “Just so you know, I have cats.”

“I know,” she said. “We texted about them, remember?”

At the front door, he fumbled with his keys for what seemed a ridiculously long time and swore under his breath. She rubbed his back to try to keep the mood going, but that seemed to fluster him even more, so she stopped.

“Well. This is my house,” he said flatly, pushing the door open.

The room they were in was dimly lit and full of objects, all of which, as her eyes adjusted, resolved into familiarity. He had two large, full bookcases, a shelf of vinyl records, a collection of board games, and a lot of art—or, at least, posters that had been hung in frames, instead of being tacked or taped to the wall.
“I like it,” she said, truthfully, and, as she did, she identified the emotion she was feeling as relief. It occurred to her that she’d never gone to someone’s house to have sex before; because she’d dated only guys her age, there had always been some element of sneaking around, to avoid roommates. It was new, and a little frightening, to be so completely on someone else’s turf, and the fact that Robert’s house gave evidence of his having interests that she shared, if only in their broadest categories—art, games, books, music—struck her as a reassuring endorsement of her choice.

As she thought this, she saw that Robert was watching her closely, observing the impression the room had made. And, as though fear weren’t quite ready to release its hold on her, she had the brief wild idea that maybe this was not a room at all but a trap meant to lure her into the false belief that Robert was a normal person, a person like her, when in fact all the other rooms in the house were empty, or full of horrors: corpses or kidnap victims or chains. But then he was kissing her, throwing her bag and their coats on the couch and ushering her into the bedroom, groping her ass and pawing at her chest, with the avid clumsiness of that first kiss.
The bedroom wasn’t empty, though it was emptier than the living room; he didn’t have a bed frame, just a mattress and a box spring on the floor. There was a bottle of whiskey on his dresser, and he took a swig from it, then handed it to her and kneeled down and opened his laptop, an action that confused her, until she understood that he was putting on music.

Margot sat on the bed while Robert took off his shirt and unbuckled his pants, pulling them down to his ankles before realizing that he was still wearing his shoes and bending over to untie them. Looking at him like that, so awkwardly bent, his belly thick and soft and covered with hair, Margot recoiled. But the thought of what it would take to stop what she had set in motion was overwhelming; it would require an amount of tact and gentleness that she felt was impossible to summon. It wasn’t that she was scared he would try to force her to do something against her will but that insisting that they stop now, after everything she’d done to push this forward, would make her seem spoiled and capricious, as if she’d ordered something at a restaurant and then, once the food arrived, had changed her mind and sent it back.

“I’m trying to figure out the right headache-inducing place for my birthday.”

She tried to bludgeon her resistance into submission by taking a sip of the whiskey, but when he fell on top of her with those huge, sloppy kisses, his hand moving mechanically across her breasts and down to her crotch, as if he were making some perverse sign of the cross, she began to have trouble breathing and to feel that she really might not be able to go through with it after all.

Wriggling out from under the weight of him and straddling him helped, as did closing her eyes and remembering him kissing her forehead at the 7-Eleven. Encouraged by her progress, she pulled her shirt up over her head. Robert reached up and scooped her breast out of her bra, so that it jutted half in and half out of the cup, and rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. This was uncomfortable, so she leaned forward, pushing herself into his hand. He got the hint and tried to undo her bra, but he couldn’t work the clasp, his evident frustration reminiscent of his struggle with the keys, until at last he said, bossily, “Take that thing off,” and she complied.

The way he looked at her then was like an exaggerated version of the expression she’d seen on the faces of all the guys she’d been naked with, not that there were that many—six in total, Robert made seven. He looked stunned and stupid with pleasure, like a milk-drunk baby, and she thought that maybe this was what she loved most about sex—a guy revealed like that. Robert showed her more open need than any of the others, even though he was older, and must have seen more breasts, more bodies, than they had—but maybe that was part of it for him, the fact that he was older, and she was young.

As they kissed, she found herself carried away by a fantasy of such pure ego that she could hardly admit even to herself that she was having it. Look at this beautiful girl, she imagined him thinking. She’s so perfect, her body is perfect, everything about her is perfect, she’s only twenty years old, her skin is flawless, I want her so badly, I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else, I want her so bad I might die.

The more she imagined his arousal, the more turned-on she got, and soon they were rocking against each other, getting into a rhythm, and she reached into his underwear and took his penis in her hand and felt the pearled droplet of moisture on its tip. He made that sound again, that high-pitched feminine whine, and she wished there were a way she could ask him not to do that, but she couldn’t think of any. Then his hand was inside her underwear, and when he felt that she was wet he visibly relaxed. He fingered her a little, very softly, and she bit her lip and put on a show for him, but then he poked her too hard and she flinched, and he jerked his hand away. “Sorry!” he said.

And then he asked, urgently, “Wait. Have you ever done this before?”

The night did, indeed, feel so odd and unprecedented that her first impulse was to say no, but then she realized what he meant and she laughed out loud.

She didn’t mean to laugh; she knew well enough already that, while Robert might enjoy being the subject of gentle, flirtatious teasing, he was not a person who would enjoy being laughed at, not at all. But she couldn’t help it. Losing her virginity had been a long, drawn-out affair preceded by several months’ worth of intense discussion with her boyfriend of two years, plus a visit to the gynecologist and a horrifically embarrassing but ultimately incredibly meaningful conversation with her mom, who, in the end, had not only reserved her a room at a bed-and-breakfast but, after the event, written her a card. The idea that, instead of that whole involved, emotional process, she might have watched a pretentious Holocaust movie, drunk three beers, and then gone to some random house to lose her virginity to a guy she’d met at a movie theatre was so funny that suddenly she couldn’t stop laughing, though the laughter had a slightly hysterical edge.

“I’m sorry,” Robert said coldly. “I didn’t know.”

Abruptly, she stopped giggling.

“No, it was . . . nice of you to check,” she said. “I’ve had sex before, though. I’m sorry I laughed.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he said, but she could tell by his face, as well as by the fact that he was going soft beneath her, that she did.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, reflexively, and then, in a burst of inspiration, “I guess I’m just nervous, or something?”

He narrowed his eyes at her, as though suspicious of this claim, but it seemed to placate him. “You don’t have to be nervous,” he said. “We’ll take it slow.”

Yeah, right, she thought, and then he was on top of her again, kissing her and weighing her down, and she knew that her last chance of enjoying this encounter had disappeared, but that she would carry through with it until it was over. When Robert was naked, rolling a condom onto a dick that was only half visible beneath the hairy shelf of his belly, she felt a wave of revulsion that she thought might actually break through her sense of pinned stasis, but then he shoved his finger in her again, not at all gently this time, and she imagined herself from above, naked and spread-eagled with this fat old man’s finger inside her, and her revulsion turned to self-disgust and a humiliation that was a kind of perverse cousin to arousal.

During sex, he moved her through a series of positions with brusque efficiency, flipping her over, pushing her around, and she felt like a doll again, as she had outside the 7-Eleven, though not a precious one now—a doll made of rubber, flexible and resilient, a prop for the movie that was playing in his head. When she was on top, he slapped her thigh and said, “Yeah, yeah, you like that,” with an intonation that made it impossible to tell whether he meant it as a question, an observation, or an order, and when he turned her over he growled in her ear, “I always wanted to fuck a girl with nice tits,” and she had to smother her face in the pillow to keep from laughing again. At the end, when he was on top of her in missionary, he kept losing his erection, and every time he did he would say, aggressively, “You make my dick so hard,” as though lying about it could make it true. At last, after a frantic rabbity burst, he shuddered, came, and collapsed on her like a tree falling, and, crushed beneath him, she thought, brightly, This is the worst life decision I have ever made! And she marvelled at herself for a while, at the mystery of this person who’d just done this bizarre, inexplicable thing.

After a short while, Robert got up and hurried to the bathroom in a bow-legged waddle, clutching the condom to keep it from falling off. Margot lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, noticing for the first time that there were stickers on it, those little stars and moons that were supposed to glow in the dark.

Robert returned from the bathroom and stood silhouetted in the doorway. “What do you want to do now?” he asked her.

“We should probably just kill ourselves,” she imagined saying, and then she imagined that somewhere, out there in the universe, there was a boy who would think that this moment was just as awful yet hilarious as she did, and that sometime, far in the future, she would tell the boy this story. She’d say, “And then he said, ‘You make my dick so hard,’ ” and the boy would shriek in agony and grab her leg, saying, “Oh, my God, stop, please, no, I can’t take it anymore,” and the two of them would collapse into each other’s arms and laugh and laugh—but of course there was no such future, because no such boy existed, and never would.

So instead she shrugged, and Robert said, “We could watch a movie,” and he went to the computer and downloaded something; she didn’t pay attention to what. For some reason, he’d chosen a movie with subtitles, and she kept closing her eyes, so she had no idea what was going on. The whole time, he was stroking her hair and trailing light kisses down her shoulder, as if he’d forgotten that ten minutes ago he’d thrown her around as if they were in a porno and growled, “I always wanted to fuck a girl with nice tits” in her ear.

Then, out of nowhere, he started talking about his feelings for her. He talked about how hard it had been for him when she went away for break, not knowing if she had an old high-school boyfriend she might reconnect with back home. During those two weeks, it turned out, an entire secret drama had played out in his head, one in which she’d left campus committed to him, to Robert, but at home had been drawn back to the high-school guy, who, in Robert’s mind, was some kind of brutish, handsome jock, not worthy of her but nonetheless seductive by virtue of his position at the top of the hierarchy back home in Saline. “I was so worried you might, like, make a bad decision and things would be different between us when you got back,” he said. “But I should have trusted you.” My high-school boyfriend is gay, Margot imagined telling him. We were pretty sure of it in high school, but after a year of sleeping around at college he’s definitely figured it out. In fact, he’s not even a hundred per cent positive that he identifies as a man anymore; we spent a lot of time over break talking about what it would mean for him to come out as non-binary, so sex with him wasn’t going to happen, and you could have asked me about that if you were worried; you could have asked me about a lot of things. But she didn’t say any of that; she just lay silently, emanating a black, hateful aura, until finally Robert trailed off. “Are you still awake?” he asked, and she said yes, and he said, “Is everything O.K.?”

“How old are you, exactly?” she asked him.

“I’m thirty-four,” he said. “Is that a problem?”

She could sense him in the dark beside her vibrating with fear.

“No,” she said. “It’s fine.”

“Good,” he said. “It was something I wanted to bring up with you, but I didn’t know how you’d take it.” He rolled over and kissed her forehead, and she felt like a slug he’d poured salt on, disintegrating under that kiss.
She looked at the clock; it was nearly three in the morning. “I should go home, probably,” she said.

“Really?” he said. “But I thought you’d stay over. I make great scrambled eggs!”

“Thanks,” she said, sliding into her leggings. “But I can’t. My roommate would be worried. So.”

“Gotta get back to the dorm room,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Yep,” she said. “Since that’s where I live.”

The drive was endless. The snow had turned to rain. They didn’t talk. Eventually, Robert switched the radio to late-night NPR. Margot recalled how, when they first got on the highway to go to the movie, she’d imagined that Robert might murder her, and she thought, Maybe he’ll murder me now.
He didn’t murder her. He drove her to her dorm. “I had a really nice time tonight,” he said, unbuckling his seat belt.

“Thanks,” she said. She clutched her bag in her hands. “Me, too.”

“I’m so glad we finally got to go on a date,” he said.

“A date,” she said to her imaginary boyfriend. “He called that a date.” And they both laughed and laughed.

“You’re welcome,” she said. She reached for the door handle. “Thanks for the movie and stuff.”

“Wait,” he said, and grabbed her arm. “Come here.” He dragged her back, wrapped his arms around her, and pushed his tongue down her throat one last time. “Oh, my God, when will it end?” she asked the imaginary boyfriend, but the imaginary boyfriend didn’t answer her.

“Good night,” she said, and then she opened the door and escaped. By the time she got to her room, she already had a text from him: no words, just hearts and faces with heart eyes and, for some reason, a dolphin.

She slept for twelve hours, and when she woke up she ate waffles in the dining hall and binge-watched detective shows on Netflix and tried to envision the hopeful possibility that he would disappear without her having to do anything, that somehow she could just wish him away. When the next message from him did arrive, just after dinner, it was a harmless joke about Red Vines, but she deleted it immediately, overwhelmed with a skin-crawling loathing that felt vastly disproportionate to anything he had actually done. She told herself that she owed him at least some kind of breakup message, that to ghost on him would be inappropriate, childish, and cruel. And, if she did try to ghost, who knew how long it would take him to get the hint? Maybe the messages would keep coming and coming; maybe they would never end.

She began drafting a message—Thank you for the nice time but I’m not interested in a relationship right now—but she kept hedging and apologizing, attempting to close loopholes that she imagined him trying to slip through (“It’s O.K., I’m not interested in a relationship either, something casual is fine! ”), so that the message got longer and longer and even more impossible to send. Meanwhile, his texts kept arriving, none of them saying anything of consequence, each one more earnest than the last. She imagined him lying on his bed that was just a mattress, carefully crafting each one. She remembered that he’d talked a lot about his cats and yet she hadn’t seen any cats in the house, and she wondered if he’d made them up.

Every so often, over the next day or so, she would find herself in a gray, daydreamy mood, missing something, and she’d realize that it was Robert she missed, not the real Robert but the Robert she’d imagined on the other end of all those text messages during break.

“Hey, so it seems like you’re really busy, huh?” Robert finally wrote, three days after they’d fucked, and she knew that this was the perfect opportunity to send her half-completed breakup text, but instead she wrote back, “Haha sorry yeah” and “I’ll text you soon,” and then she thought, Why did I do that? And she truly didn’t know.

“Just tell him you’re not interested!” Margot’s roommate, Tamara, screamed in frustration after Margot had spent an hour on her bed, dithering about what to say to Robert.

“I have to say more than that. We had sex,” Margot said.

“Do you?” Tamara said. “I mean, really?”

“He’s a nice guy, sort of,” Margot said, and she wondered how true that was. Then, abruptly, Tamara lunged, snatching the phone out of Margot’s hand and holding it far away from her as her thumbs flew across the screen. Tamara flung the phone onto the bed and Margot scrambled for it, and there it was, what Tamara had written: “Hi im not interested in you stop textng me.”

“I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“Oh, my God,” Margot said, finding it suddenly hard to breathe.

“What?” Tamara said boldly. “What’s the big deal? It’s true.”

But they both knew that it was a big deal, and Margot had a knot of fear in her stomach so solid that she thought she might retch. She imagined Robert picking up his phone, reading that message, turning to glass, and shattering to pieces.

“Calm down. Let’s go get a drink,” Tamara said, and they went to a bar and shared a pitcher, and all the while Margot’s phone sat between them on the table, and though they tried to ignore it, when it chimed with an incoming message they screamed and clutched each other’s arms.

“I can’t do it—you read it,” Margot said. She pushed the phone toward Tamara. “You did this. It’s your fault.”

But all the message said was “O.K., Margot, I am sorry to hear that. I hope I did not do anything to upset you. You are a sweet girl and I really enjoyed the time we spent together. Please let me know if you change your mind.”

Margot collapsed on the table, laying her head in her hands. She felt as though a leech, grown heavy and swollen with her blood, had at last popped off her skin, leaving a tender, bruised spot behind. But why should she feel that way? Perhaps she was being unfair to Robert, who really had done nothing wrong, except like her, and be bad in bed, and maybe lie about having cats, although probably they had just been in another room.

But then, a month later, she saw him in the bar—her bar, the one in the student ghetto, where, on their date, she’d suggested they go. He was alone, at a table in the back, and he wasn’t reading or looking at his phone; he was just sitting there silently, hunched over a beer.

She grabbed the friend she was with, a guy named Albert. “Oh, my God, that’s him,” she whispered. “The guy from the movie theatre!” By then, Albert had heard a version of the story, though not quite the true one; nearly all her friends had.
Albert stepped in front of her, shielding her from Robert’s view, as they rushed back to the table where their friends were. When Margot announced that Robert was there, everyone erupted in astonishment, and then they surrounded her and hustled her out of the bar as if she were the President and they were the Secret Service. It was all so over-the-top that she wondered if she was acting like a mean girl, but, at the same time, she truly did feel sick and scared.

Curled up on her bed with Tamara that night, the glow of the phone like a campfire illuminating their faces, Margot read the messages as they arrived:

“Hi Margot, I saw you out at the bar tonight. I know you said not to text you but I just wanted to say you looked really pretty. I hope you’re doing well!”

“I know I shouldnt say this but I really miss you”

“Hey maybe I don’t have the right to ask but I just wish youd tell me what it is I did wrog”

“*wrong”

“I felt like we had a real connection did you not feel that way or . . .”

“Maybe I was too old for u or maybe you liked someone else”

“Is that guy you were with tonight your boyfriend”

“???”

“Or is he just some guy you are fucking”

“Sorry”

“When u laguehd when I asked if you were a virgin was it because youd fucked so many guys”

“Are you fucking that guy right now”

“Are you”

“Are you”

“Are you”

“Answer me”

“Whore.” ♦


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

and loser dudes like him generally throw tantrums whenever they lose the girl. even if they ended up in a relationship whenever ol girl finally bounced on him she was gonna get that whore text or something derisive.

>and loser dudes like him generally throw tantrums whenever
>they lose the girl. even if they ended up in a relationship
>whenever ol girl finally bounced on him she was gonna get that
>whore text or something derisive.



Plus we all know plenty of these guys exist, thats probably why the story resonates so well. It has been New Yorker's top 5 read piece for 6+ weeks now

im not familiar w/ Cat or TNY really.

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

I don't think a woman should ever go to a dudes house on the first date.

>I don't think a woman should ever go to a dudes house on the
>first date.
>

Unless she's that naive to think he's just inviting her over for tea and biscuits.

and it's the first date or a Tinder date in my mind I'm thinking "you just gave him Home field advantage"

that will definitely be high on my list of no no's when my daughters start dating.

But yeah calling this sexual assault seems like a reach and that terms in general is being thrown around a lot now for gravitas.

if that was even true, how would *he* know that?

.

I don't enjoy red wine with sea food - at least, in terms of pairing - at all.

French whites know how to treat the food right, especially saltwater food.

Muscadet is the classic pairing, especially shellfish. But lobster rolls are so rich you might want a Chablis chardonnay or Sancerre sauv blanc to cut through it a bit more.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

i have no idea tho. I don’t know him.

I read this interview with Dave Chapelle that was awesome. Talked about comedians being miserable people in real life, depressed, insecure, etc.

This story read like it was an awkward sexual experience. In the future tho, if a guys points to his dick that doesn’t mean you have to suck it.

first, she is absolutely entitled to her experience and what she felt and perceived as a sexual assault. I am not trying to diminish her experience or be dismissive of it.

I think she was violated, but her violator isn't Aziz, directly, imo.

secondly, we have to restructure patriarchy and the rape culture that pits a man's virility versus a woman's virginity, and have it play out in some cat/mouse flirtations, when there are real emotions, consequences, decisions, pleasures, etc at stake. It can't just be consensual, it has to also be conscious.

looking at the date, and the nonverbal cues which went missed, there definitely has to be an onus on men to understand their proximity to power - even more so famous/more powerful than most men.

However, the work can't just be on men to do better. Much is required of us, but something is required of women as well *ducks*

hear me out: Aziz was at an event being Aziz, minding his business. A woman came to him looking to start conversation, which he initially brushed off. Some might consider this a nonverbal cue, but she interjected again. Eventually they struck up a convo about cameras, exchanged numbers, and then she went back to her date. All clear and good right? Fine.

This entire scenario had her empowered and outside of patriarchy (on face value). She was with a date, but pursued another interest. She initiated conversation and saw it through, and gave up her information. She was in control and has every right to do so.

She was semi direct. Then they texted back and forth for a bit, through who knows what was communicated, but then that lead to a date. A date filled with red flags of not picking up on non-verbal cues, but then also ended in the sexual dissatisfaction and remorse, and ultimate violation of what Grace hoped would transpire that day.

I am totally for us revolutionizing this paradigm and relationship with these type encounters, but long gone have to be the days on nonverbal cues being a protocol for dealing with matters this important. If we want different and better the expectation can't be for guys to just "get it". As loud as you want your nonverbal cues to be, they will also be drowned out by your physical acquiescence. These situations are (of course, for different reasons and dynamics) awkward for guys too. Had this not been Aziz and the famous component, I am not sure what her expectations would have been for the date, or if she would have felt more compelled to say "no" outright.

HOWEVER, I totally get that society has not put women in a position to say "no" in these circumstances, and that other factors contribute, and that she is not wrong or to be blamed, or complicit in this aspect. But if the ideal of equality and sexual liberation, protection, and the dismantling of patriarchy is the goal, then we all have to be in the driver's seat. You have to say "no", and then stop, and then walk away/leave. Otherwise, Aziz should have been strong enough to turn her away at the party? Or she should have taken that as a cue that she was barking up the wrong tree? Or any other critical or subsequent time that she could withdraw herself from the situation which made her uncomfortable? How else is anyone supposed to know?

Or maybe it IS because it is Aziz. And HE consciously is aware that this person who is pursuing him wants an association with him. And he can pursue his sexual agenda as well, I suppose....

He did some creep life stuff, indeed, but it seems his biggest verbal cue was "lets fuck, or something equivalent" and she wasn't all the way with it, but still wanted to be there. Maybe a compromise could exist in there somewhere, but again without the dialogue how is anyone to know?

I have had a discussion with my GF all morning about this, and SHE has convinced ME to this line of thinking. It's time to all be involved in this, imo.

I dunno.

hmmm.. not sure about this. Maybe if she was trying to get a job or worked for him but on a date? She could say no. She could leave.

Too many women have voiced that saying "no" in that exact position could literally be a life or death outcome. It has played out too many times.

When you are a woman who is sexually engaged with a person that you later decide you'd rather stop, even if you care about them: what in society has given you a playbook or script that you can voice that in the moment and everything be cool, or you'll be safe, or that you can stop fucking and stay?

I'd love to see some examples cause I can think of non.

Plenty for men, but not so much for women, or basically any other iteration of humanity.

but I was speaking more on before the sex happens. Like if you are kissing and dude puts his hands on your privates..

I agree once in the act it's hard to voice your no but reading this it seemed like she had hesitations multiple times but didn't speak on them and didn't want to leave.

let me reread but I think his oral preceded him moving her hand to his junk.

either way, no matter the time line, she had the means to say naw or yes, but I get the hesitation for either.

which makes for some awkward feelings.

she was surprised by how quickly things escalated.

Like he went from kissing to fondling to oral sex in a matter of ten minutes, based on when she was counting.

But Aziz may be like we met a week ago, been texting, just had drinks, and dinner, ok lets get things started.

The main thing is the way society is set up is it almost depends on this line crosses as a means of communication. Instead of sitting down and consenting, it turns into a cat and mouse dynamic where it's like "let me try this, and see if she recoils"...terrible dynamic for anything meaningful, unless you're into that.

sounds like she has problems speaking up for herself in general. aziz got caught in traffic


*edit

about what they want. With that as a metaphor, if offer you Chinese and you eat it, I will never assume that you actually wanted Burger King.

Like I don't know how anyone is supposed to work with that. They both had expectations of each other. One voiced theirs and was direct. The other wasn't. Both are semi-defendable and both could do better. Both are right to their defenses and both need to do better.

imo.

Perhaps you shouldn't going to the dudes crib.

And the leaps we're making from sexually awkward to sexual assaulter to murderer are mind boggling.

literally all the time.

I'm not making a leap in saying that woman considers the real danger or retaliation - from revenge porn to abuse, to yes death - just for refusing sexual advances or suspending action. It is not an easy thing to play out.

Again, can you name examples in which society has demonstrated or scripted how this is supposed to play out that ends favorably for a woman?

I can for a man, not so much for any other iteration of humanity. She would be rude, or a prude, or manipulative, or fucked up, or any other thing under the sun.

By yourself. Whether they famous or not.

Like did she not ask for red wine bc she was in fear of her life too? If so, she still drank the wine and went to his house after.

I mean. Aziz sounds like a bozo who don't know how to interact with woman onamed a sexual level but this piece sounded like bozo shaming to me.

That the logic is "well that's why you don't go to random niggas' cribs cause you might get sexually assaulted, and that's the norm" doesn't help ANYBODY, nor should it be the norm.

If she WERE interested sexually, and up to a line, then 1. it should be ok for her to voice that, 2. she needs to voice it, and 3. she should not have to accept violation because *shrugs* she should know better.

I think the lesson is for everybody to do better, from a societal perspective.

But she wasn't even able to voice that she didnt, and wanted, to finish her wine.

I'm not sure Aziz is the main culprit for that.
>
While Aziz as described is a dweeb for not being remotely interested in how she was enjoying the experience I'm not sure Aziz is the main culprit for her feelings of violation.

I know there are some crazy dudes in the world but most of them aren’t going to kill you if you said no.

It’s also why you don’t go to some dudes house/home/room on the first date.

Understanding her perspective, I do see why it is not a built in mechanism for her to go "oh, let me just say I want to stop and leave"

that may not have been her intention though. She may have just wanted to stop THAT, but chill and talk, or whatever. How do you interject that? There are legit pressures that keep people from acting in the moment.

However, if you want things to be different, you have to start acting differently in the moment. She is valid. She is right to feel violated. But I don't think Aziz is directly her violator.

>She may have just wanted to stop THAT, but chill and talk, or whatever. How do you interject that?

The next step is to leave. If he prevents her from leaving, then this is a different convo.

and real talk, I understand being frustrated a dude ain't smooth with it.

is really doing woman a disservice.

when i read her account, dude totally sounded like a creep... yet... I know personally, I stopped counting the number of times I had to tell my spouse im not a fuckin mind reader and she needs to tell me straight up when she's upset about something or needs me to do such and such...

Aziz had a creepish attitude but without victim-blaming, I think she could've done a better job at communicating her disapproval of his behavior...

im also not sure that in this particular case, the public shaming was warranted

>im also not sure that in this particular case, the public
>shaming was warranted


I think both names should have been kept private. The past 36 hours have made it pretty clear this is a useful conversation piece for thriving couples, recently broken up couples, new couples, single people, men and women that are strangers to each other to converse over because it seems like a lot of people have wound up doing some soul searching or detective work on their own thought processes to see how both genders across a lot of different classes, social statuses and races interpret this situation.

But it could've just been passed along as non-fiction with fake names and the point would've been made just the same. The only value Aziz' name adds to this story is the trope of the nice guy in public, rapey asshole in private, but a good writer could've developed that over a paragraph setting up the scenario also.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

it seems like 80% (maybe higher) of 15-35 year old women think the takeaway is obvious, but among other groups including older women, the response is less clear

i think part of it is the way the story was written, with grace's internal thoughts framing everything. younger women in particular will relate to those feelings and thoughts in a way that others don't, which leads to the others focusing more on the explicit actions described (hanging around with no clothes on, oral sex, the claw, etc.) rather than any nonverbal cues.

and that results in a reaction of yeah, aziz sounds a little creepy/desperate/awkward, but he wasn't violent or threatening, so she shoulda just bounced. while people who empathize more with grace feel like it's not that easy to just leave or say no - why couldn't he just stop pressuring her when it's so obvious she wasn't interested?

"Was Grace frozen, terrified, stuck? No. She tells us that she wanted something from Ansari and she was trying to figure out how to get it. She wanted affection, kindness, attention...What she felt afterward—rejected yet another time, by yet another man—was regret."

This is a story about a white woman going out of her way (leaving her date, lingering after being brushed off when keep in mind black women get kicked out of events with celebrities if we linger after being brushed off, but that's another conversation) to try to get a celebrity's attention because she was star struck and , as a white woman, incapable of the idea that a man, especially man of COLOR, could not be immediately enamored simply because she is white and a cis woman. This is what white women are taught. This is what white women teach their daughters. This has happened since SLAVERY.
This is why white women can be so dangerous because when things do not go their way, they will lie and twist things in order to make the other person, especially the person of color, take the downfall.
(Raise your hand if a white woman has lied on you because things didn't go her way 👋🏾👋🏾👋🏾👋🏾👋🏾)

People say she felt pressured. I'm not saying she didn't, but what I am saying is not once did Aziz suggest there would be favorable or non favorable outcomes if she did or did not suck his dick twice. He pointed to his dick and she sucked
Why?
Because this kind of white woman has very low self esteem and will base her self worth on her ability to receive love, attention, and affection from men. This is the kind of white woman that goes out of her way to show men in her life the ugliest photos she can of black women (I've witnessed this on MORE THAN ONE occasion) in order to further perpetuate the ideal that she is superior, more desirable, and more worthy than women of color simply because she is white. That's why she left saying "all you men are the same" because she consistently finds herself in these situations of her not knowing how to get the love she deserves(🙄) from men she feels are obligated to provide this to her.
That's why she wanted to "have her hair and back played with/rubbed"(who the fuck would want this from someone that makes them feel violated?!?!!!!!!!!!!!) because she wanted to be different. She wanted to be SPECIAL. She didn't want to be the groupie that she set herself out to be. She didn't want to penalize her chance of being taken seriously by this celebrity man after she had already revealed her colors.

White women need to stop pretending this movement is designed to suggest they have no agency, and everyone else must be parental.
White women, you don't always need to be saved.
White women, stop being passive aggressive and learn to be assertive.
White women, stop hogging the microphone of this movement and start creating spaces for black and brown women who do not get the luxuries you get, even within THIS movement.
I've seen so many white women post how "it's easier said than done, I've been in this situation and I wasn't able to be strong, I don't have it in me"
MUST BE FUCKING NICE.
Black women have no choice but to be strong, black Women are FORCED to be strong, no one SAVES black women, and until the world stops coddling and catering to you, or until you learn you have some agency, you won't be strong either.
But y'all don't WANT to be strong, because strength comes with accountability, and that means you would have to stop crying wolf.

And if you really want to keep it real, let's go ahead and acknowledge how young 20 something nobodies get into these after parties in the first place. See, I have a group of gals, all white, on Tumblr that could trace this girl down and reveal her true colors, but I won't put that information out there.
Y'all know white women be scheming, let's not pretend this situation was any different.

Again, I will not excuse the behavior of Aziz as I hold him accountable for his actions and for being stupid enough to mess around with a young white woman with these traits in the first place, AND I will say he sure as hell is putting on a front to cash in on this movement...but what I won't fucking do is pretend this woman doesn't have agency, and because he didn't fulfill her dream of being loved by a famous man with her wine of choice, that her decisions were not HER decisions.

And white Women, if you're upset that this black woman will not automatically cape for you for the sake of womanhood... do better. Hold yourselves accountable. Call out your fellow white woman. Give men and women who look like me a reason to trust you."

- Kharisma Facciolo

Anti-gentrification, cheap alcohol & trying to look pretty in our twilight posting years (c) Big Reg
http://Tupreme.com

But there's a good bit of truth in there too

the entitlement that even moderately attractive white women feel is staggering. When you do something they don't like, they lose their mind. You are now the worst person who has ever lived and how dare YOU tell THEM anything that doesn't fit in with their imagined plans of how things are "supposed" to go for them.

That YT girl entitlement is why a lot of brehs go Latina/Asian/middle eastern when they hop the fence

just because he refused to date her because she was legit crazy.

honestly, shorty's whole narrative is hella dangerous.

Women of color generally don't get the privilege of choosing whether they had agency or not AFTER the fact.

the problem is that there are women who don't, not that there are women who do.

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

dude is a Bro. She thought it was going to be an Aziz and Francheska type scene, and apparently, all the sensibility he puts into the show is exactly that...for show.

He apologized, so its clear her account was accurate.

I guess her non verbal queues said, PULL OUT YOUR DICK AND STICK YOUR FINGERS IN MY THROAT.


SMH.

He apologized, so its clear her account was accurate

Y'all out here caping for Aziz, who was clearly on a search and destroy mission.

She wasn't with it. He was focused.


She didn't know that she needed to throw the wine glass at him or the like to make her discomfort clear. And SHE SHOULDN'T HAVE FUCKING HAD TO...

He's a star, and all the privilege and cynicism that comes along with it was on display. He was trying to fuck, and was too busy being Aziz, star doing numbers to pay attention.

It really is that simple. Are there details that will probably change? Sure- maybe he didn't force her head down. Maybe he thrust his hips up so his dick was in her face. It don't fucking matter.

Is clowning aziz for his ridiculous behavior and weak game.

But yeah, just bc he apologized doesn't mean everything went down like she said it did. Do the details matter if the bottom line was the same....not really. But its still a silly statement to make and a very dangerous road to go down.

but this doesn't mean ole girl gets a pass for acting like a spoiled white girl who can't even speak up on her choice of wine.

Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader.

Jan. 15, 2018
Op-Ed Contributor


Actor Aziz Ansari after winning the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series — Musical or Comedy, this month.Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
I’m apparently the victim of sexual assault. And if you’re a sexually active woman in the 21st century, chances are that you are, too.

That is what I learned from the “exposé” of Aziz Ansari published this weekend by the feminist website Babe — arguably the worst thing that has happened to the #MeToo movement since it began in October. It transforms what ought to be a movement for women’s empowerment into an emblem for female helplessness.

The headline primes the reader to gird for the very worst: “I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life.” Like everyone else, I clicked.

The victim in this 3,000-word story is called “Grace” — not her real name — and her saga with Mr. Ansari began at a 2017 Emmys after-party. As recounted by Grace to the reporter Katie Way, she approached him, but he brushed her off at first. Then they bonded over their devotion to the same vintage camera.

Grace was at the party with someone else, but she and Mr. Ansari exchanged numbers and soon arranged a date in Manhattan.

After arriving at his TriBeCa apartment on the appointed evening — she was “excited,” having carefully chosen her outfit after consulting with friends — 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.” Yes, we are apparently meant to read into the nonconsensual wine choice.

They went out to dinner nearby and then returned home to Mr. Ansari’s apartment. As Grace tells it, the actor was far too eager to get back to his place after he paid for dinner: “Like, he got the check and then it was bada-boom, bada-bing, we’re out of there.” Another sign of his apparent boorishness.

Grace complimented Mr. Ansari’s kitchen countertops. The actor then made a move, asking her to sit on the counter. They started kissing. He undressed her and then himself.

In the 30 or so minutes that followed — recounted beat by cringe-inducing beat — they hooked up. Mr. Ansari persistently tried to have penetrative sex with her, and Grace says she was deeply uncomfortable throughout. At various points, she told the reporter, she attempted to voice her hesitation, and that Mr. Ansari ignored her signals.

At last, she uttered the word “no” for the first time during their encounter, to Mr. Ansari’s suggestion that they have sex in front of a mirror. He said: “‘How about we just chill, but this time with our clothes on?’”

They got dressed, sat on the couch and watched “Seinfeld.” She said to him: “You guys are all the same.” He called her an Uber. She cried on the way home. Fin.

If you are wondering what about this evening constituted the “worst night” of Grace’s life, or why it is being framed as a #MeToo story by a feminist website, you probably feel as confused as Mr. Ansari did the next day. “It was fun meeting you last night,” he texted.

“Last night might’ve been fun for you, but it wasn’t for me,” she responded. “You ignored clear nonverbal cues; you kept going with advances. You had to have noticed I was uncomfortable.” He replied with an apology.

Read Grace’s text message again.

Put in other words: I am angry that you weren’t able to read my mind.

It is worth carefully studying Grace’s story. Encoded in it are new yet deeply retrograde ideas about what constitutes consent — and what constitutes sexual violence.

We are told by the reporter that Grace “says she used verbal and nonverbal cues to indicate how uncomfortable and distressed she was.” She adds that “whether Ansari didn’t notice Grace’s reticence or knowingly ignored it is impossible for her to say.” We are told that “he wouldn’t let her move away from him,” in the encounter.

Yet Mr. Ansari, in a statement responding to Grace’s story, said that “by all indications” the encounter was “completely consensual.”

I am a proud feminist, and this is what I thought while reading Grace’s story:

If you are hanging out naked with a man, it’s safe to assume he is going to try to have sex with you.

If the inability to choose a pinot noir over a pinot grigio offends you, you can leave right then and there.

If you don’t like the way your date hustles through paying the check, you can say, “I’ve had a lovely evening and I’m going home now.”

If you go home with him and discover he’s a terrible kisser, say “I’m out.”

If you start to hook up and don’t like the way he smells or the way he talks (or doesn’t talk), end it.

If he pressures you to do something you don’t want to do, use a four-letter word, stand up on your two legs and walk out his door.

Aziz Ansari sounds like he was aggressive and selfish and obnoxious that night. Isn’t it heartbreaking and depressing that men — especially ones who present themselves publicly as feminists — so often act this way in private? Shouldn’t we try to change our broken sexual culture? And isn’t it enraging that women are socialized to be docile and accommodating and to put men’s desires before their own? Yes. Yes. Yes.

But the solution to these problems does not begin with women torching men for failing to understand their “nonverbal cues.” It is for women to be more verbal. It’s to say: “This is what turns me on.” It’s to say “I don’t want to do that.” And, yes, sometimes it means saying piss off.

The single most distressing thing to me about Grace’s story is that the only person with any agency in the story seems to be Aziz Ansari. Grace is merely acted upon.

All of this put me in mind of another piece published this weekend, this one by the novelist and feminist icon Margaret Atwood. “My fundamental position is that women are human beings,” she writes. “Nor do I believe that women are children, incapable of agency or of making moral decisions. If they were, we’re back to the 19th century, and women should not own property, have credit cards, have access to higher education, control their own reproduction or vote. There are powerful groups in North America pushing this agenda, but they are not usually considered feminists.”

Except, increasingly, they are.

Grace’s story was met with so many digital hosannas by young feminists, who insisted that consent is only consent if it is affirmative, active, continuous and — and this is the word most used — enthusiastic. Consent isn’t the only thing they are radically redefining. A recent survey by The Economist/YouGov found that approximately 25 percent of millennial-age American women think asking someone for a drink is harassment. More than a third say that if a man compliments a woman’s looks it is harassment.

To judge from social media reaction to Grace’s story, they also see a flagrant abuse of power in this sexual encounter. Yes, Mr. Ansari is a wealthy celebrity with a Netflix show. But he had no actual power over Grace — professionally or otherwise. And lumping him in with the same movement that brought down men who ran movie studios and forced themselves on actresses, or the factory floor supervisors who demanded sex from women workers, trivializes what #MeToo first stood for.

I’m sorry Grace had this experience. I too have had lousy romantic encounters, as has every adult woman I know. I have regretted these encounters, and not said anything at all. And I have regretted them and said so, like Grace did. And I know I am lucky that these unpleasant moments were far from being anything approaching assault or rape, or even the worst night of my life.

But the response to Grace’s story makes me think that many of my fellow feminists might insist that my experience was just that, and for me to define it otherwise is nothing more than my internalized misogyny.

There is a useful term for what Grace experienced on her night with Mr. Ansari. It’s called “bad sex.” It sucks.

The feminist answer is to push for a culture in which boys and young men are taught that sex does not have to be pursued like they’re in a porn film, and one in which girls and young women are empowered to be bolder, braver and louder about what they want. The insidious attempt by some women to criminalize awkward, gross and entitled sex takes women back to the days of smelling salts and fainting couches. That’s somewhere I, for one, don’t want to go.

i just wrote out this long response
and ended up backspacing all of it

but this is the same shit i said up there
he didn't read her mind
and for that
you can't blame him

i have too many opinions about this, especially after reading bari weiss' twitter feed, but i think that's the best way to understand this. she, like emily yoffe, has written quite a bit about both.

this op-ed isn't really about #metoo. #metoo as a movement shouldn't be responsible for (or involved at all in) due process. it's about recognizing a pervasive problem.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/am-i-a-bad-feminist/article37591823/

Am I a bad feminist?
MARGARET ATWOOD
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED JANUARY 13, 2018
UPDATED 8 HOURS AGO
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than 40 books of poetry, fiction and essays, including The Handmaid's Tale.

It seems that I am a "Bad Feminist." I can add that to the other things I've been accused of since 1972, such as climbing to fame up a pyramid of decapitated men's heads (a leftie journal), of being a dominatrix bent on the subjugation of men (a rightie one, complete with an illustration of me in leather boots and a whip) and of being an awful person who can annihilate – with her magic White Witch powers – anyone critical of her at Toronto dinner tables. I'm so scary! And now, it seems, I am conducting a War on Women, like the misogynistic, rape-enabling Bad Feminist that I am.

What would a Good Feminist look like, in the eyes of my accusers?

My fundamental position is that women are human beings, with the full range of saintly and demonic behaviours this entails, including criminal ones. They're not angels, incapable of wrongdoing. If they were, we wouldn't need a legal system.

Read also: More than 10 writers remove their names from controversial letter in Steven Galloway case

Nor do I believe that women are children, incapable of agency or of making moral decisions. If they were, we're back to the 19th century, and women should not own property, have credit cards, have access to higher education, control their own reproduction or vote. There are powerful groups in North America pushing this agenda, but they are not usually considered feminists.

Furthermore, I believe that in order to have civil and human rights for women there have to be civil and human rights, period, including the right to fundamental justice, just as for women to have the vote, there has to be a vote. Do Good Feminists believe that only women should have such rights? Surely not. That would be to flip the coin on the old state of affairs in which only men had such rights.

So let us suppose that my Good Feminist accusers, and the Bad Feminist that is me, agree on the above points. Where do we diverge? And how did I get into such hot water with the Good Feminists?

In November of 2016, I signed – as a matter of principle, as I have signed many petitions – an Open Letter called UBC Accountable, which calls for holding the University of British Columbia accountable for its failed process in its treatment of one of its former employees, Steven Galloway, the former chair of the department of creative writing, as well as its treatment of those who became ancillary complainants in the case. Specifically, several years ago, the university went public in national media before there was an inquiry, and even before the accused was allowed to know the details of the accusation. Before he could find them out, he had to sign a confidentiality agreement. The public – including me – was left with the impression that this man was a violent serial rapist, and everyone was free to attack him publicly, since under the agreement he had signed, he couldn't say anything to defend himself. A barrage of invective followed.

But then, after an inquiry by a judge that went on for months, with multiple witnesses and interviews, the judge said there had been no sexual assault, according to a statement released by Mr. Galloway through his lawyer. The employee got fired anyway. Everyone was surprised, including me. His faculty association launched a grievance, which is continuing, and until it is over, the public still cannot have access to the judge's report or her reasoning from the evidence presented. The not-guilty verdict displeased some people. They continued to attack. It was at this point that details of UBC's flawed process began to circulate, and the UBC Accountable letter came into being.

get this woman all the way outta here.

Opinion Babe’s Aziz Ansari piece was a gift to anyone who wants to derail #MeToo

Aziz Ansari arrives at the 75th annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Jan. 7. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/Associated Press)
Over the weekend, a story broke at the online publication babe detailing a sexual encounter between Golden Globe-winning “Master of None” star Aziz Ansari and an anonymous woman who went by “Grace” for the purposes of the report. The title? “I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life.”

In it she detailed how they met (at an Emmy after-party), how they flirted for the next few days (over texts), how they got together (she came over for drinks at his apartment, then went for dinner and drinks at a fancy restaurant down the street, then came back to his house for more drinks), and how it ended in tears (Ansari moved in aggressively and awkwardly, they had oral sex, she went along with it all until he pushed for intercourse, she rebuffed him, they made out a bit more, she became uncomfortable and asked to leave, he called her an Uber and she left).

The story quickly went viral and social media did what social media does: explode into outrage. Grace’s tale slid into the unfolding narrative of #MeToo and #TimesUp; indeed, the whole thing came about because Ansari, a noted male feminist, wore a #TimesUp button on the Golden Globes red carpet last week. The calls swiftly and mercilessly came: for Ansari to lose his show, for him to be shunned, for his career to end. He was one of the good ones, it’s always the good ones, this is why we can’t have nice things, #YesAllMen, etc.

#MeToo: What is sexual harassment?

People who felt moved by the viral #MeToo campaign give their personal definitions of sexual harassment. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

The only issue with all this is that this story about Ansari is nothing like the ugly tales of sexual abuse that have wafted out of Hollywood over the past six months or so. Not really. From Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual assaults and use of blacklists to Kevin Spacey’s predatory behavior toward young men to Louis C.K.’s masturbating in front of people without asking, these were all stories that were both criminal in nature and involved an abuse of power over underlings. The #MeToo movement’s story has been a relatively straightforward one that garners support from both sides of the aisle and all decent people, because it is a tale of how powerful people humiliate and subjugate those who want nothing more than a chance to chase their dreams.



The babe story is not about this. It is about a date that went badly, one that did not live up to the expectations of the woman involved. Consider, for instance, the inclusion of this paragraph in the story: “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.’ Then Ansari walked her to Grand Banks, an Oyster bar on board a historic wooden schooner on the Hudson River just a few blocks away.”

The aside about the white/red wine is something that any writer or editor who truly understood the stakes of this story would have taken out of the piece. It makes the subject appear silly, if not bitter or resentful. I honestly thought for a moment that I might be reading a parody after that line: There’s no grander point about consent in this anecdote — if she had asked for white and he had laughed at her and said no and forced her to drink red, well, okay, maybe that would fit a piece like the one we are reading. This isn’t that. It’s simply out of place in a piece that should have immense gravity.

The essay was not parody, of course. It’s altogether too real. And, honestly, it’s altogether believable: I don’t doubt that it played out roughly like she remembers. Ansari himself seems to have accepted Grace’s explanation about how the evening made her feel: in a statement, he said he apologized to her after she told him that their encounter had made her uncomfortable.

#MeToo: Who counts as a victim?

What makes a sexual harassment or sexual assault incident serious enough to report? People who felt moved by the #MeToo campaign share their thoughts. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

Clearly, that conversation didn’t settle things between the pair. And in the absence of a scenario that seems likely to lend itself to the sort of renewed police investigations that have followed reports of Weinstein’s conduct, the babe piece reads like an attempt to punish Ansari by other means. As Caitlin Flanagan put it in a blistering piece titled “The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari,” “what 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.”

I would suggest there’s a reason this story appeared in babe, rather than the New York Times or BuzzFeed or the Los Angeles Times or, yes, The Washington Post. One of the reasons is that, however Grace now thinks of the encounter, what happened isn’t sexual assault or anything close to it by most legal or common-sense standards. And bad dates — including terrible ones that leave one person feeling humiliated — aren’t actually newsworthy, even when they happen to famous people.



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The intersection of culture and politics.
But another, larger reason has to do with the fact that this not only harms the #MeToo narrative writ large, it totally derails any future stories about Ansari that might come out. Every piece about him and potential misconduct, unless it’s truly egregious, will be viewed through the lens of Grace’s story: of one unhappy encounter detailed at great and grotesque length by a disappointed date.

The irony of all this is that, while Ansari’s story went viral, another, more important one got lost in the news cycle. Actress Eliza Dushku, writing on her Facebook page, accused a then-36-year-old stunt coordinator of molesting her at the age of 12. It’s a horrifying story, every parent’s worst nightmare — and an actual crime, an actual abuse of power and trust. These are the sorts of tales people interested in clearing Hollywood of abuse should be telling. This is the best way to promulgate the story line.

But, hey, who has time for all that when we’re leering and gagging at the thought of Aziz Ansari maladroitly pursuing a grown woman who regretted her decisions?

who will defend them when they're innocent except everyone

hegemonic nature of patriarchy. That leads to some pretty clumsy conclusions on your part, especially when trying to assess how popular interpretations of intersectionality judge and affect Black men and women (as you did in reply 66). You seem to have an extremely shallow idea of how these theories and systems practically operate (also evidenced in reply 66 but also by your name-dropping in reply 141 without any real substance or expressed understanding of their work),
You could be pretending to not understand, just not be willing to, or simply incapable... either way, feigned or sincere, you sound ignorant.

i appreciate you clarifying. i thought that's where you were going...i understand that generalizing from my response it might make it seem that i don't know how this could be used. that's a mistake on my part, and you're right that it was a flippant, white dude mistake to make.

that doesn't mean that i don't understand that systems of oppression have always been more than capable of finding justifications for oppressing people. the prison system was racially and economically biased before young white women started sharing poetry on instagram. #metoo doesn't change that dynamic positively or negatively on its own...it's up to us to use the opportunity of people speaking up to remind people of all the privileges and abuses in our narratives about gender, race, abuse, consent, desire, etc.

we do need to be aware of people who will use it to buttress racist and racially coded claims. we do need to be aware of the potential for the social networks, media, and *justice* system to turn this around so that it serves to maintain privileges. we need to actively fight unjust claims.

however, we don't need to blame victims and their advocates, or feminist theory in general. it's not that i don't take these criticisms seriously. it's that i know that these claims of "excesses" are routinely used to undermine legitimate concerns about structural imbalances, in this case sexism and sexual politics.

we saw a lot of what's played out here with #blacklivesmatter, for example, when it came to people talking about which protests were appropriate, why the victims weren't so innocent, why the shootings and uses of force were justified, etc.

it's not the same, but there are similarities.

right now, i see white supremacy, patriarchy, and ageism playing off each other to undermine these feminists. sexual abusers have been getting away with it, are getting away with it, and the pendulum is swinging back in their direction. harassment and unfair expectations and shitty behavior are problems too, and they shouldn't be minimized just because we like aziz ansari or al franken and we dislike how their mistakes were brought to our attention.

we have to fight the tendency that says we have to choose between which issues in our society we need to fix, and say they're all unacceptable.

and i wasn't name dropping. i've been reading a lot from most of these op-ed people. they're established journalists with long track records, and they're writing in conversation with people i've been reading for a while.

https://youtu.be/y4bAULTwAJU

gotta say im surprised that so many people are coming to aziz defense here. didnt expect media people to get be reasonable enough to come to this conclusion

LOL

btw -- Ashleigh is looking really nice without the specks.

she gonna get that O'Bryan Soul Train Theme Song soon

her reaction is Onion-esque in its irony.

http://www.businessinsider.com/aziz-ansari-writer-email-to-hln-ashleigh-banfield-2018-1

It's an unequivocal no from me. The way your colleague Ashleigh (?), someone I'm certain no one under the age of 45 has ever heard of, by the way, ripped into my source directly was one of the lowest, most despicable things I've ever seen in my entire life. Shame on her. Shame on HLN. Ashleigh could have "talked" to me. She could have "talked" to my editor or my publication. But instead, she targeted a 23-year-old woman in one of the most vulnerable moments of her life, someone she's never fucking met before, for a little attention.

I hope the ratings were worth it! I hope the ~500 RTs on the single news write-up made that burgundy lipstick bad highlights second-wave feminist has-been feel really relevant for a little while. She DISGUSTS me, and I hope when she has more distance from the moment she has enough of a conscience left to feel remotely ashamed — doubt it, but still. Must be nice to piggyback off of the fact that another woman was brave enough to speak up and add another dimension to the societal conversation about sexual assault. Grace wouldn't know how that feels, because she struck out into this alone, because she's the bravest person I've ever met.

I would NEVER go on your network. I would never even watch your network. No woman my age would ever watch your network. I will remember this for the rest of my career — I'm 22 and so far, not too shabby! And I will laugh the day you fold. If you could let Ashleigh know I said this, and that she is no-holds-barred the reason, it'd be a real treat for me.

Thanks,
Katie

...

http://www.katykatikate.com/2018/01/not-that-bad_15.html

Not That Bad

Yesterday I read a piece in Babe. You know the one.

The piece by Katie Way tells the story of a young woman whom we know as Grace who met Aziz Ansari, went on a date with him, and then engaged in sexual contact with him that was deeply uncomfortable and upsetting.

The allegations against Ansari open up the next, harder, messier chapter in the #metoo movement, one in which the vast majority of us are no longer able to simply say, "If you're not with us, you're against us."

The line in the sand is hard to see here. This is the one that is forcing me into a place where I'd rather not go. This is scary to write and publish.

So far I as I can tell, these are the teams.

In Grace's corner:
This was a sexual assault.

Twitter is hopping with women coming forward with their own hookup stories that run the range from mildly icky to flat-out horrifying.

In Ansari's corner:
This was really bad sex.

People are starting to roll their eyes at what passes for sexual assault these days.

And The Atlantic published a piece called "The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari," subtitled, "Allegations against the comedian are proof that women are angry, temporarily powerful-- and very, very dangerous."

(In unrelated news, hi The Atlantic. If you want to find out how dangerous angry women are for being called temporarily powerful and also for having their anger once again weaponized against them in an attempt to shut them up, then give me a call.)
(In other unrelated news, if The Atlantic burns down today I'm going to need an alibi.)

In the "I'm freaking out" corner:
(silence)
(texts a friend:
Did you see this Ansari thing? Hmm.)

I wouldn't presume to speak about why any other women are struggling to stand with Grace on this one, so I'm just going to tell you why it's hard for me.

Yes, this one is hard for me. Please keep reading.

I read Grace's story with amusement, embarrassment, and creeping unease.

I was not outraged. Well, I am outraged at The Atlantic, Liam Neeson, and Twitter. But I was not outraged at Ansari. I felt uncomfortable.

Grace's story is so familiar that I laugh at it without smiling. It's the story of so much bad sex.

I have had my fair share of what I'd call "crappy dates." And what I call crappy dates looks an awful lot like what Grace calls sexual assault. It's like we went on the same dates, wrote down the same details, and told two very different stories.

And here's mine: (Silence of the Lambs)

And be honest.

If you got to choose a narrative for your life, which cut would you pick? The one where Clarice descends into cannibalistic hell and fights for her life? Or the one where she's caught in a jaunty love triangle with a couple of quirky gents?

And that's the thing: we do get to pick how to decide to tell our stories, at least to ourselves. I've dated a few Dr. Lecters, and like Clarice Starling I escaped with a few tears, a few shivers of disgust, and a few stories that I rarely tell. I decided not to call those encounters assault. I decided to make those nights the bad-date montage in act one of the story of my happy life.

That's how I moved forward.

Grace's story is common. It's so common that I don't have to imagine it because I remember it. I laugh about it without smiling. It's the story of so much bad sex. And when I hear that bad sex described as a sexual assault, it forces me to reexamine my own history. And see, I just started feeling strong again.

I believe her; I don't agree with her.
I'm telling you this not because I think she is wrong,
but because I think I am.

You have to understand that many women approach humiliating and uncomfortable sex from a place of "it's not that bad."

Part of "not that bad" is a preemptive minimization of our experiences. You know, the way Fat Amy calls herself Fat Amy in Pitch Perfect so that the other girls can't do it first? It's our armor.

I know what people will say when I tell them that I had a professor who put his arm around me (I was 19) and asked why we weren't dating, while his hand stroked the bare skin of my shoulder (it was spring.)

I am waiting for people to say, "So he just... put his arm around you?" I am waiting for them to ask for a gasp-worthy punchline: actually I was 12, or a tit grab, a ten-pound helmet into his lap, an offer to exchange nude selfies for a better grade. They're already imagining there is more to the story. There really isn't.

I don't want to have to up the ante, tell another worse story to prove that I had the right to be uncomfortable when my professor stroked my bare shoulder in a dark theater. I don't want to have to buy my friends' support with maximum humiliation.

I have no interest in turning my sexual history into social currency; exchange rates are so unpredictable.

So I hurry up to add, "It wasn't that bad." That way, the people I'm telling have to convince me, "No, that really wasn't cool." If you push, people push back, that's just human nature. If you pull away, they come to your side and find you. They can't resist.

So I say, "It's not that bad," and I hope they'll come over to my side, and find me.

Does that make sense? This is complicated.

Ansari's behavior, as it is described in the article, is fucking awful and ordinary. So many men learn how to perform sex by watching porn, itself a performance of sex that for the most part treats women like props.

Women have had so much bad sex that our scale for sex has been skewed so it shows every shitty sex encounter as 10 pounds less shitty than it was.

Jabby and fumbling and pushy and transactional? He convinced you to say yes even though you said no a bunch of times? OK, but did he leave bruises? No? Did he leave the condom on the whole time? You think so?

Then we're going to call that one, "meh" and lock it up in the "Not that bad" vault. You don't want to make a big deal out of this - people will ask why you didn't just leave.

But Grace's story re-zeroes that scale, and suddenly everything in my past that's already beyond fixing is +10 worse.

Jabby and fumbling and pushy and transactional? He convinced you to say yes even though you said no a bunch of times?

That's coercive, nonconsensual sex. You have a right to feel violated.


No! It was meh! We already decided, no take-backsies!

I'm a kid in a corner kicking the wall with my fingers in my ears.

No, no, no! I don't wanna! I'm rom com Clarice! I'M ROM COM CLARICE!


this isn't creepy
it's fine
this isn't scary
it's nice

see?
he just said hi
with nice eyes
and she was like
oh you

see?
it's fine
i'm fine
everything's fine

Women have already taken enough of a painful personal inventory to be able to say #metoo; I am not eager to go back over what I've come to comfortably accept as "crappy hookups," or "shitty sex," and come to realize that yes, that was sexual assault too.

If we begin to call all sexual assault what it is, we will have to voluntarily admit more pain into our lives, pain that we have up to this point refused to let in the door. If we call this kind of sexual encounter an assault, then women who have been weathering what they call bad sex will suddenly have justification for the icky feelings and shame that follows them home in the cab. And yet, we'd really rather just hit the showers.

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.

And yes, guys, what Grace described is totally normal for a woman. 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. They don't have to imagine it either.

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

People are quick to label sex crimes as deviant or aberrant, but the truth is that sexual violence is socialized into us. Men are socialized to fuck hard and often, and women are socialized to get fucked, look happy, and keep quiet about it.

Aziz Ansari has been socialized.
And if we don't like the way socialized men do sex, then we need to take a hard look at our society, friend.

Now, I want to be clear. Ansari is 100% responsible for what he did. He behaved like a sexual bully who hurt and humiliated a woman while he acted out a fantasy that was his and his alone. He treated her like a prop. And if you don't understand why that's shitty, ask yourself how much your hand enjoys jerking you off. Ansari is responsible for knowing better, and caring about whether his sexual partners are comfortable, safe, and enjoying themselves. Even though nobody ever taught him that's a "normal" way to do sex. It's his job to help change the normal.

As a woman, I am supposed to take what's given to me, to shrink my pain, ignore my bad feelings about what just happened, and generally be FINE WITH EVERYTHING! Also I have to have a good banana bread recipe.


so like that
except instead of being in a room on fire
you're in an apartment and someone is sticking his fingers in your mouth
over and over again

What I'm realizing now, after reading Grace's story and the responses to it, is that when I shrink my own pain, I also shrink my empathy for women who feel the same pain and feel it full-size. I resent Grace for talking about her hookup as if it's an assault. I'm mad at her for talking about it at all.

But that's not because she was wrong to talk about it. And it's for sure not because she was wrong to go on a date, drink wine, or try to have a pleasurable sexual encounter. She wasn't. She wasn't wrong.

It's because if what happened to her is a violation, then we are all violated. And everyone is a violator. And that's a scary fucking world to live in. I don't want that to be the world I live in.

Can it be that we are so okay with being hurt as women
that we are skeptical of the idea
that sex shouldn't be humiliating or scary?


FUCK
I THOUGHT THIS WAS A ROM COM.


If you shared my hesitation to stand up with Grace on this one, I'm just asking you to hang out and ask yourself why. You don't have to come up with answers. It's enough to notice and wonder.

These uncomfortable conversations are part of #metoo, as much as the truth telling and hearing. The only easy day was yesterday, when we found ourselves mostly in agreement that Weinstein is a slimy bag of dicks, and Spacey is a scummy, flesh-eating bacteria.

This was never going to be easy or smooth. It's absurd to think that we'd be able to push through what Frances McDormand called a tectonic shift without revealing fault lines we didn't know were there. We're going to find ourselves on opposite sides of things. We're going to disagree. And we're going to get uncomfortable. Remember that you, too, are socialized. Even though you've been hurt, you are also trained to hurt others. I am; I do. I'm trying to do better.


Remember, we don't fail when we disagree. We fail when we go quiet and walk away. Stick around. Be honest. Don't be scared. Or be scared, but don't be quiet.

And if you need a break, you can always just pop in a rom com.

but i did get to this part:

"But Grace's story re-zeroes that scale, and suddenly everything in my past that's already beyond fixing is +10 worse.

Jabby and fumbling and pushy and transactional? He convinced you to say yes even though you said no a bunch of times?

That's coercive, nonconsensual sex. You have a right to feel violated."

and here's where i'll say this author's take is bullshit. because, in this case, Grace didn't say no a bunch of times. she just tried to use body language which he either ignored or just didn't catch the cues. however, in Grace's own account she says when she finally told him "no" he stopped and said "how about we just chill, but with our clothes on" and they watched TV. it goes back to the op eds about not being a mind reader. sounds like if she would just said "no" from jump she'd have been in a cab and in her own bed well-before even she expected.

the threat of violence.

As black men, we are trained our entire lives to put white women at ease because any time you cross a white woman, she can immediately go to the "I was threatened" route and make us look like predators and play on the stereotype of the voilent black man.

I was just in a meeting a few weeks ago and I had a disagreement with a white woman in the meeting and she began to cry and told others that I was acting aggressively towards her. And I am sure the people she told (and maybe even you) believe that to be true, but the only saving grace I have is the two other people in the meeting (including a white woman) assured me that I did nothing of the sort and the woman's reaction was over the type. It fucked up that I needed white character witnesses to confirm what I knew to be true, but those are the breaks being a black man.

Now we all read the story and there is nothing in the story that implies that Aziz threatened her or used any sort of physical intimidation to have sex with the woman, but still your reaction was to assume or imply that there was some form of physical intimidation. And that's the assumption is an assumption that every black male is familiar with.

I believe you have sons and I guarantee that if they spend enough time around white women, they will eventually face some accusation of being physically threatening or "aggressive" towards a white woman. I don't care how polite, how much they are trained to be respectful, it happens to all of us. I would guess that you don't want to be part of creating an atmosphere were that is easier to do without some basis for it.

The #metoo movement can thrive without pandering to racial stereotypes that hurt black men.


On another note I think the piece is good and had a lot of valid points but I do have a problem with 1.) expanding non-consensual sex to include the "I didn't want him to hate me so I did it sex" and the 2.) I don't like the attitude of the "well the #metoo movement was bound to get messy so, so what if a brown man has to be thrown in the wood chipper for the cause".


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

but it's definitely reframing things

yes...dating is transactional and the roles we've been socialized into sucks...and aren't conducive to healthy sex lives

but that doesn't make this assault

nearly EVERYONE has accepted her story as true (that's huge)

but the atlantic and other places are also right to call it out as a hit piece to a certain extent

i think it's important to look out for women without having to infantilize them

i think this story is important when talking about the overall climate that makes #metoo necessary but that framing it as assault is really fucked up

people want to break the paradigm while adhering to it staunchly

just cuz you had a sexual encounter with poor communication that you regret doesn't mean you get to cook Aziz life and career.

i'm ALL for getting rapists out of the fucking paint, but this ain't it.

When she met him, ya'll just gonna gloss over that part?

https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355

Third paragraph

They flirted a little — he took two pictures of her, she snapped some of him — and then she and her date went back to the dance floor. “It was like, one of those things where you’re aware of the other person all night,” she said. “We would catch eyes every now and then.”

She wason some hoe shit and expected romance.

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

and were right on the money...and lots of dudes know this is coded language but can't resist cosigning. seems like some dissonance there to me.

and a tendency to focus on aziz as an awkward beta male instead of part of a pattern

awkward beta male and part of the problem though

and the stargazer aspect was also due to her actions in the story...not stereotypes

the fact we can't talk about it without going there is a problem for okp. again, we've seen #blm derailed the same way too on other forums.

and it's not just the article. there are clearly several people in this post that want to paint this as an issue of lack of game on aziz's part, which is unfair and not helpful to anyone.

qualifies as a severe lack of game

people are saying he should have picked up on those non-verbal cues...

i tend to agree...but that's part of game

just bc that's part of what's wrong with the situation doesn't mean it's the only thing wrong in the situation

there are tons of things wrong that won't ever get addressed...some of those things should be and it doesn't mean that it takes away from the bigger discussion

I am not defending the use of the word "bitch" or "hoe", I was really just pointing out that it was a nice catch to notice she was on a date at the time and yes I do think that speaks to her character to some degree (weird fact to be included in the article).

I do think she comes off as a star fucker based on her actions in the piece.

I get the impression that she was looking for a romance with Aziz and he treated her like someone he was just trying to fuck. Based on her account, I am not prepared to write him off as a terrible person.

Trying to figure out what's the dissonance in all of that.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

the name calling is dehumanizing, and i was pointing out that your post before this thread managed to be respectful and show concern for overcoming bias, but you're not holding everyone to the same standard.

>I am not defending the use of the word "bitch" or "hoe"

you're willing to cosign a post that leans heavily on it without calling it out though

>was really just pointing out that it was a nice catch to
>notice she was on a date at the time and yes I do think that
>speaks to her character to some degree (weird fact to be
>included in the article).

i'm sure most of us have dated multiple people at once, and it didn't "speak to our character"

>I do think she comes off as a star fucker based on her actions
>in the piece.

>I get the impression that she was looking for a romance with
>Aziz and he treated her like someone he was just trying to
>fuck. Based on her account, I am not prepared to write him
>off as a terrible person.

that's structural inequality. this is classic dissonance. decent people in unjust systems do terrible things.

>Trying to figure out what's the dissonance in all of that.
>
>
>**********
>"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then
>they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson
>
>"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

i've heard countless stories of meeting the next date while on a date

it's definitely frowned upon

if existing within a system or participating within a system makes it unjust...that's literally EVERYONE

there's no tangible way to have have different end goals for a date outside of the system

he brushed her off...she persisted...bc that's acceptable within the system

Not dating multiple at the same time.

But I think that's a very minor point. Again, I don't think it speaks to the veracity of her claim. It just helps paint the picture of her being somewhat of a starfucker.




>the name calling is dehumanizing, and i was pointing out that
>your post before this thread managed to be respectful and show
>concern for overcoming bias, but you're not holding everyone
>to the same standard.

Yeah my earlier post wasn't on some kumbiyah everyone needs to be nice and more respectful of each other. I am not even advocating against overcoming bias in general (notice I pointed out that's just the world we live in).

I was making very specific point to the mother of black boys that she shouldn't buy into stereotypes about black men.

>
>>I am not defending the use of the word "bitch" or "hoe"
>
>you're willing to cosign a post that leans heavily on it
>without calling it out though

Sure. I don't think I presented myself as someone who has an issue with name calling or using derogatory language.




>
>>was really just pointing out that it was a nice catch to
>>notice she was on a date at the time and yes I do think that
>>speaks to her character to some degree (weird fact to be
>>included in the article).
>
>i'm sure most of us have dated multiple people at once, and it
>didn't "speak to our character"
>
>>I do think she comes off as a star fucker based on her
>actions
>>in the piece.
>
>>I get the impression that she was looking for a romance with
>>Aziz and he treated her like someone he was just trying to
>>fuck. Based on her account, I am not prepared to write him
>>off as a terrible person.
>
>that's structural inequality. this is classic dissonance.
>decent people in unjust systems do terrible things.

What's the structural inequality? Elaborate.





>
>>Trying to figure out what's the dissonance in all of that.
>>
>>
>>**********
>>"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then
>>they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson
>>
>>"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

I don't really care about that part. But she went out with him once, went back to his place, they were fooling around. I don't think sex came out of left field. Dude was hella extra and then real pushy. By no means am I defending his behavior but at the same time I think she could have blown him off and moved on. It isn't like he ran either, they talked the next day, he apologized, etc. Shit like this undermines a lot of women who have suffered some really horrible stuff.

But it does kind of speak to the character.

I thought her complaining about his choice of wine was more telling of her privileged thinking.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

when she finally verbalized the no...he stopped

there are all these expectations of him recognizing non-verbal cues or verbal hints

but those expectations of her are considered victim-blaming

there's no room for him to be aggressively awkward

but there's tons of room for her to be starstruck paralyzed, passively awkward, and everything in between

men do the direct pursuing on the date...and it turns into an assault because he's as awkward as he pretends to be

but the fact that he brushed her off and she persisted isn't viewed in that predatory/groupie lens

it's a lot of mental gymnastics going on and it doesn't even seem necessary

it's like the people who don't want agency are complaining to the agency police...she's a victim of gender roles maybe and the direction of pursuit

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

eh, I mean if there's emotional attachment then who am I to say.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

So you make gross pervy statements while trying to criticize people for being gross and pervy? Ok.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

about this sick fuck assaulting and molesting girls and young women. He was so great a manipulator that a father didn't believe his daughter and threatened his own blood about lying.

He finally came to believe her 6-7 years later and then killed himself.

There are millions of real stories out there of pain and abuse and assault and manipulation. This is not one of them, this allows for f**kwads to dismiss real acts.

so blaming this story for nassar is a lie. good try tho!

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

getting less shine than this.

the Aziz story has alot of room for debate, and more people can relate to it on some level compared to horrific harrasment/molestation stories that pretty much everyone agrees on. So in that light, it makes more sense it's gonna get more play.

which is what they want.

it ain't about protecting the sanctity of other #MeToo stories.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

>it ain't about protecting the sanctity of other #MeToo
>stories.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

they aren't exactly from MRA peeps

do not reformulate or re-aim.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/14/french-feminists-catherine-deneuve-metoo-letter-sexual-harassment


Feminism The Observer
After the #MeToo backlash, an insider’s guide to French feminism

Catherine Deneuve joined 99 other prominent French women in a letter last week accusing the Hollywood anti-abuse campaign of censorship and intolerance. Agnès Poirier explains how the debate is viewed in Paris


Catherine Deneuve, the French film star whose signature drew international attention to the open letter last week.
French women made headlines all over the world last week. And not because they never get fat or their children never throw food, as a series of American bestsellers put it, but because 100 of them signed an open letter published in Le Monde offering an alternative view of the #MeToo campaign and drawing attention to what they regard as rampant censorship in feminist ranks. In signing the letter, the French film star Catherine Deneuve set the feminist world ablaze.

They spoke their mind in a Gallic manner: straightforwardly, to the point of appearing blunt. The letter was also strikingly badly edited, with clumsy chunks unworthy of their authors. But, in short, they think the campaign by the #MeToo movement to tackle sexual harassment represents a “puritanical … wave of purification”; that “rape is a crime, but trying to seduce someone, even persistently or cackhandedly, is not, nor is being gentlemanly a macho attack”.

They went on to proclaim that “what began as freeing women up to speak has today turned into the opposite – we intimidate people into speaking ‘correctly’, shout down those who don’t fall into line, and those women who refused to bend are regarded as complicit and traitors”.

In other words, these 100 French women, representing many more in France, argue that this new puritanism reeks of Stalinism and its “thought police”, not of true democracy. What they refuse to countenance is an image of women “as poor little things, this Victorian idea that women are mere children who have to be protected”, the same one extolled by religious fundamentalists and reactionaries.

“As women, we do not recognise ourselves in this feminism, which beyond denouncing the abuse of power takes on a hatred of men and of sexuality.”

This is an example of what has always distinguished French feminism from the American and British versions: the attitude towards sex and towards men.


Abnousse Shalman, A French-Iranian writer says she does not dismiss the courage of #MeToo campaigners, but wants to ‘add a different voice’. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
Partly lost in translation, the letter was vilified on social networks, its authors accused by some of being “lobotomised” by their “internalised misogyny” (according to Asia Argento), and more generally for being “rape apologists”, “too old and decrepit to understand women’s issues today”, for being “over-privileged”, for being “stuck in the 1960s and 1970s”.

Deneuve and Catherine Millet, the art critic famous for The Sexual Life of Catherine M, suddenly became the faces of what was seen by many younger feminists in France and abroad as a retrograde bunch of over-privileged celebrities and intellectuals both totally unconcerned by the plight of all those anonymous victims of rape and sexual harassment and too preoccupied by their sexual freedom and defending the French way of gallivanting about.

The letter’s authors did not do themselves any favours by writing of men’s “right to pester” women. This clumsy and unacceptable line poured more oil on the fire and reinforced prejudices and cliches about French women. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote in 1947: “American women have only contempt for French women always too happy to please their men and too accepting of their whims.”

This is a real shame: the letter puts forward strong arguments. And it does so by being overtly French; in other words, by sounding authoritative – and rude. Heated debate is a passion, considered healthy in France. As the highly regarded 89-year-old French historian and feminist Michelle Perrot, partly critical of the Deneuve letter, wrote: “They are triumphant free women who show a certain lack of solidarity with the #MeToo victims … But they say what they think, and many people share their point of view. The debate is real and must be recognised.”

In France today, different feminist groups coexist: the main one is a feminism following the steps of De Beauvoir, one that is not at war with men but rather with machismo culture, gender inequality and the inherent misogyny of religions.

And there is a rather recent American import of feminism, one that often comes across as opportunistic and “man-hating”, one that turns a blind eye to religious misogyny, for instance defending the wearing of the hijab. They present themselves as the new vanguard of French feminism, the new blood, except they can sound to some like Stalinist commissars, or Robespierre in culottes, passing edicts about what is acceptable conduct. We would be wrong, however, to think that the current debate shows a generational fight. Many millennials have signed the Deneuve letter. The divide is political, ideological even.


According to Perrot, “the authors of the letter fear that the #MeToo movement dents creative, artistic and sexual freedom, that a moralist backlash comes and destroys what libertarian thinking has fought hard to obtain, that women’s bodies and sex become again this forbidden territory and that a new moral order introduces a new censorship against the free movement of desire”, and concludes: “There is indeed reason to share their fear.”



This is probably the most interesting and sharpest argument made in the Deneuve letter. As Sarah Chiche, a 41- year-old psychoanalyst and author who signed the Deneuve letter, explained: “The #MeToo victims’ personal stories have proved a powerful magnet and very popular with the public. It has almost become a new norm in public discourse. Unfortunately, this is becoming insidious: now books need to be rewritten, films reshot.”

Last week an opera director in Florence decided to change the end of Bizet’s Carmen so that Carmen now kills her murderer. Ridley Scott edited out Kevin Spacey from his latest film and reshot his scenes with Christopher Plummer in All the Money in the World. Art critics questioned on the BBC whether to boycott the Gauguin exhibition in London because the painter slept with under-age Tahitians. Others want to rewrite Sleeping Beauty so that the final kiss is a consented one.

Since Deneuve signed the letter, Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour has suddenly been described as a rape apologist film, to be banned from cinemas. “This new feminism is now serving the interests of cultural revisionism and doesn’t know when or where to stop,” says Chiche.

It is a French tradition to disturb, to question, to critique, to set ablaze the conflict between two freedoms, that which protects and that which disturbs. Sexuality has become the new battlefield. “Today, in 2018, Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses and Nabokov’s Lolita would never see daylight because of both reactionaries and self-proclaimed progressives who invoke the fate of real victims to shut us all up,” says Chiche.

For all the talk about Deneuve, little has been said of the initiator of this public letter. Her name is Abnousse Shalmani. She is a 41-year-old French-Iranian, born in Tehran. She grew up under Ayatollah Khomeini until her parents fled to Paris in 1985. In a book she published in 2014, Khomeini, Sade et Moi, she revealed that she was the victim of a rape, but also said French authors such as Colette, Victor Hugo and Marquis de Sade taught her how to be free, as a woman and a sexual being, far from the Islamic veil she was forced to wear as a girl in Tehran.

Perhaps we should listen to her when, amid the furore, she tried to make herself heard on French radio: “We do not dismiss the many women who had the courage to speak up against Weinstein. We do not dismiss either the legitimacy of their fight. We do, however, add our voice, a different voice, to the debate.”

One should always listen to the French difference.

Agnès Poirier is a London-based French writer and political commentator. Her forthcoming book Left Bank, Arts, Passion and the Rebirth of Paris 1940-1950 (Bloomsbury) is to be published in March

we gasp and clutch pearls and look for the right things to SAY.
Not even necessarily to change behavior either...but just the right response. Or we flail against the right response as PC. But we don't take to time to reflect upon shit
Shit's wild as hell, given how much is changing before our eyes, culturally.
How can a puritanical culture that praises the cowboy and the "good girl" equally make sense of 21st century women's autonomy in a dating paradigm in which we're ALL taught that women are prey, and men hunt? That's like 14 contradictions, lol

I think its super weird how we analyze "The Apology".

Like Dan Harmon is being praised for his apology, but we have no clear idea of what he did. He could have been the worst of them all, but right now he is getting the pat on the back because of the quality of his apology.

And then you see what looks like a lot of heartfelt sincere apologies being ripped to shred.

I just think we are incapable of discussing anything in this country in meaningful ways on a large public scale.

We are way more comfortable with hashtags.




**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

this story is tough bc if you absolutely know that she has zero interest in sex...it's like "woah aziz" and it sounds like that's the case...but it's not a stretch that he wouldn't know that

i still don't think it's sexual assault but it definitely looks like the grayer and still weaponized cousin "sexual misconduct"

but the reality of dating is that people navigate tons of potentially uncomfortable things...

you gotta navigate shame, different goals, cultural differences, and a variety of shit

people play hard to get - men are expected to navigate that (often by being pushy or persistent or moving on)

the game needs to be thrown out all together if you expect most people to navigate society's hangups and individual's hangups just to have sex

i think the ideals are in the right place but you can't change the system by participating in it and then only holding one side accountable

this shit is messy as fuck and he sounded like either a complete creep or someone who thought he had a few hoops to clumsily jump through to get to the promise land

Some small talk then PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE.

If you don't come in with your mind made up and saying "NOPE!" at every opportunity, they're going to keep pitching you until you walk away with a vacation property you don't want and can never get rid of.

At least if it was a timeshare, she'd have 3 days to come to her senses and rescind the deal. With this encounter, there's no way to undo it.

Anyway, I don't know if this rises to the legal level of assault but it certainly was a shitty encounter precipitated by Aziz. While she could've been more assertive, I think he did take advantage of her passivity. It's gorilla-pimping 101.

he needs to read "She Comes First"

Rapist or not

You can show a photo of a guy with a smiling woman and folks will say they see the fear in her eyes. Then every encounter takes on a different meaning when folks check the tapes.

Recount her whole story and remind yourself that she was naked
until he told her to put her clothes on.

and still throw some shade her way AND we know even if everything she said is true, we also know that there are also tons of details that were not mentioned that would color everyone's impression of what went down.

I am also curious if there was any texting that went on after the texts that we saw.

If she tried to arrange for them to get together again, would people think differently of her story?



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Lolz

And think it would be cool to jam fingers in a dates throat?

I went to pornhub trying to figure out if that was a thing and have found nothing.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Called Rocco, about an infamous Italian porn star known for his rough sex features who is ‘retiring’. Its shockingly well made considering its subject matter. What was interesting and why I bring it up is that the film makes it a point to show on his sets/before they shoot much of the consent talk...there’s even one based around the finger in the mouth. The thing thats funny is at least in the doc he’s continously asking for concent and it flows pretty natural considering how extreme the sex play is. Its why I always kinda dont understand how dudes act like its impossible to get consent along the way.

I've seen stuff and I'm questioning whether they really got consent before doing "ever seen the leg lock?"

Maybe they should pass a law that says every porn seen must include a consent reel, maybe for after the credits?

I am pretty sure porn is what got guys out here wilding.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

young people aren't educated and nobody knows anything that they should.

but like...you're in your 30s b. you should know by now that you can ask about what you're about to do to a woman and that will have no impact on whether or not she's with it.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

anything your sloppy, unkempt ass can tell me about how to relate and deal with women?

Look in the mirror and think about it. I mean that some shit you could only try online.




**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

pointed elsewhere.

bro you might be a little emotional about this beef you think we have.

I mean, you ain't shit, but I don't think about you ever.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

https://vimeo.com/183089808

Hope this helps...

Look at this. SMH. This is a huge disservice to "Grace".

https://twitter.com/maxwelltani/status/953729116649517056?ref_src=twcamp%5Ecopy%7Ctwsrc%5Eandroid%7Ctwgr%5Ecopy%7Ctwcon%5E7090%7Ctwterm%5E0

https://twitter.com/HLNPR/status/953470568958849025?ref_src=twcamp%5Ecopy%7Ctwsrc%5Eandroid%7Ctwgr%5Ecopy%7Ctwcon%5E7090%7Ctwterm%5E0

Look at this shit:

https://twitter.com/velocciraptor/status/953749672526360576?ref_src=twcamp%5Ecopy%7Ctwsrc%5Eandroid%7Ctwgr%5Ecopy%7Ctwcon%5E7090%7Ctwterm%5E0

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxAlJq94-b8

White feminism gonna kill Society

when it doesn't go well?

and then tries to blame the journalist who got it right for calling them out on it?

their MO like the parent company thetab is to get writers in or fresh outta college and have em write for clicks and pay em in promises and “for your resume”

Usually I don’t feel old but, lol, you growing up in a social media world you would have some sense or chill even if it was just for “branding”. Grace shouldda just thrown this on Vox or Medium, lol

"Grace" makes a case for coersion and creep life.


But the way that her article was written rubbed me the wrong way (picky about the wine choices and how cute her outfit is).

Now I see why. Even the editors at this site dropped the ball.

And she is about to walk her ass right to a new career as an artisanal cheese maker.

Good to know

Deck wrote his CREAM verse when he was 22.

Is age really an excuse for Katie Way???

I know, that’s a little facetious.

But I just hope her entitlement and arrogance (and whiteness? privilege?) don’t get lost in the “she’s only 22” talk.

she invoked her age specifically to point out that the HLN anchor is washed and she has a whole life ahead of her and the television world can eat it with their outdated patriarchal conspiracy


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

He fucked up by not paying attention to non verbal cues and messing with someone that was not in the right mind. He should've freed the woman from the shackles of this terse encounter and degrading situation by not entertaining her in the first place. The second the situation looked sketchy is the second he should've ended it.

I hope his career doesn't end because of this.

I know shit looked wide open but it was covered the whole time.

... looked to the sideline, changed camera modes, and ran the ball anyway. You can clearly see this ain't working. Tom Brady calls an audible to run another play but not Aziz. I'm shaming him for not giving a fuck and doing it anyways.

Aziz has to make better life decisions after this.

.

Aziz out here eating out groupies, oops, sociable low self esteem white women that need to make better life decisions as soon as they enter his house. He about to have the iPhone X waiting line for his services.

His career is over because he pissed off white women.

his career? *shrug* depends on what direction he's going with it.

I don't even know what he's doing right now.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

will be fine.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

>... looked to the sideline, changed camera modes, and ran the
>ball anyway.

yep

>The second the situation looked sketchy is
>the second he should've ended it.

I'm hoping the site is some elaborate parody of millennial women and this shit isn't serious

First thing you'll notice is the classic "white media outlet using black slang for clickbait" fuckery.

"we know the difference between a rapist, a workplace harasser and an Aziz Ansari. That doesn't mean we have to be happy with any of them."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II-OP6vdMs8


www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

.

I'm not, I don't know why you or anyone else would ask me that question since I wasn't there, don't know what happened or even who this person is.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

>I'm not, I don't know why you or anyone else would ask me
>that question since I wasn't there, don't know what happened
>or even who this person is.

but but but

>in case there's any confusion "we know the difference between a rapist, a workplace
>harasser and an Aziz Ansari. That doesn't mean we have to be
>happy with any of them."

Do you know what happened or don't you?

It seemed that way, like you were cosigning its idea that "we know the nature of Aziz's offense, and where it lies on the totem pole of sexual offense."

It seems strange to then suggest you don't really know anything about happened. How are those consistent beliefs?

it's not how they work. ask a native american.

second, whether or not something is "sexual assault" is not a part of that statement.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

.

I'd love to learn about it.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

that nowhere in the quote I posted is the question "was this sexual assault" mentioned or raised.

I thought I was going to have to show you how irrelevant your question was, but I guess you're on the job.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

"in case there's any confusion" and then presenting an account which, one reply later, you acknowledged you have NO awareness of the facticity therein.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

https://jezebel.com/babe-what-are-you-doing-1822114753

It's even pointed out that babe dot net went out their way to track down this story.

Some more stuff is linked in the article too.

And did so without fully calling to task the journalist that propagated this story?

Shocking.

the issue.

They only real thing they point to in the reporting is the wine choice, the outfit talk and the claw.

The wine choice was a bad call. The outfit discussion just shows how excited she was about the date. And the claw talk was kind of necessary to show how far Aziz went above and beyond the range of normal just making a move on the girl.

At any rate if you take out these three elements the story would still have received the backlash it did.

I think the most even-handed and fair assessment of it all came from CNN with this story, not incidentally written by a black woman.


http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/17/opinions/lets-be-honest-about-aziz-ansari-brawley/index.html

I will admit that I prefer the black women's take on this because they can call out the white privilege in the babe article AND still make the case against Aziz.



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

It does show things in a new light.

daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly?

Why was he so pressed and thirsty? That's the part that doesn't add up?

I can see an every day dude trying to get out of a dry spell acting like this
but not a dude that rolls to the most exclusive a-list parties and has fans, shoutout to Ghostface

They weren't for lack of a better term "sexually compatible".

all that shit is thirst, acting like he's never had a woman come over before

I really thought celebs were exempt from that kind of behavior or having to have game just by virtue of their fame

I've been backstage at shows and seen women literally throw themselves at artists. That doesn't happen to civilians.

I doubt this was the first time he'd ever tried any of that.

Alot of it reads thirsty to us because we'd never be able to get away with any of that, so we know better than to try it. For celebrities, it's only thirsty if she has a problem with it.

he is good to go..

hell, it sounded like he was good to go until he kept doing the finger thing.

ionno tho, shit still reads like a woman who was kinda down until she wasn't down and that's when she left.

chix

and it comes out

one way or another

>daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly?
>
>Why was he so pressed and thirsty? That's the part that
>doesn't add up?
>
>I can see an every day dude trying to get out of a dry spell
>acting like this
>but not a dude that rolls to the most exclusive a-list parties
>and has fans, shoutout to Ghostface

Some of the things that sound really odd to us, might be part of the mating ritual for that demographic.

Like the bit where she said they could have sex on the second date and he says well if I get you a drink can we consider that a second date?

I swear I have seen that in a character he has played or just can see him so vividly doing that.


I think one reason a lot of these sort of stories occur is because stars are so use to panties dropping that it is sort of a rote routine for them and they are not use to a girl seriously pushing back and just pay no attention to the signs that a woman is throwing them that they aren't down. At least in some cases.




>daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly?
>
>Why was he so pressed and thirsty? That's the part that
>doesn't add up?
>
>I can see an every day dude trying to get out of a dry spell
>acting like this
>but not a dude that rolls to the most exclusive a-list parties
>and has fans, shoutout to Ghostface
>
>


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"