By Julianna Perkins
At first, the recent sexual misconduct allegations against actor Aziz Ansari might just seem like the next domino to fall in a string of Hollywood scandals. But analyzing the backlash could help us understand #MeToo’s critical divide.
On Jan. 13, the website babe.net published an anonymous account of a 23-year-old New York-based photographer’s date with actor Ansari. The photographer, who used the pseudonym “Grace”, described meeting Ansari at the 2017 Emmy Awards after-party then going for dinner on their first date, and the subsequent events that reportedly followed.
According to babe, Grace and Ansari went to his apartment following the date, where he immediately began kissing her, quickly undressed and pressured her towards sex. She asked him to slow down.
Over the roughly 30 minutes the two allegedly spent in the apartment, Grace said she repeatedly expressed both verbal and nonverbal cues to show that she was uncomfortable and distressed, while he kept indicating that they should have sexual intercourse.
Babe reports that the two did engage in oral sex, to which Grace said she felt pressured.
Eventually Ansari called her a car and she left in tears, she said. On the way home, she messaged multiple friends to tell them about how downhill the experience had gone, saying she felt “violated” and “weird”.
Ansari has since released a statement saying that the two “engaged in sexual activity” but said that “by all indications [it] was completely consensual.”
Grace’s account has received much backlash since its publication.
“We cannot indiscriminately start destroying careers over consensual sexual activity, which based on her account is what this case appears to be,” said Lucia Brawley, executive producer of “Take Back the Mic: The World Cup of Hip Hop” in an opinion piece on CNN.
“There is a useful term for what this woman experienced on her night with Mr. Ansari. It’s called ‘bad sex,’” said staff editor and opinion writer Bari Weiss in the New York Times.
Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, the culture editor of Jezebel, called babe’s report “amateurish” and “prurient”.
The biggest criticism so far is that Grace’s account undermines the #MeToo movement. By making her story public, it seems many feel that Grace has rushed to claim victimhood for a “minor” issue, therefore minimizing victims of “real” sexual assault.
Let’s pause right there and summarize. So far we’ve categorized Grace as a career-destroying, overreacting, sensationalizing opportunist.
And all that is coming from women who claim to support the #MeToo movement.
Why has this one incident raised so much debate? From where do these floods of “empowered” hate stem? Why does it seem like the #MeToo movement is now eating itself?
Because it’s easier to denounce instances of obvious rape and assault as bad, or as illegal, or as traumatic, than it is to approach the confusing and often situational gray areas of sex and say “this was wrong.”
Because what older generation feminists called “bad sex” and “boorish behaviour” is in the process of being questioned and reanalyzed by younger feminists.
Because we’re forcing the movement to actually work, instead of just talk. It’s not falling apart, it’s becoming more self-aware and discovering that the levels of sexual mistreatment are vast and varying.
For years, Ansari has marketed himself as the “woke bae” alternative to Hollywood’s endless string of white fuckboys. In 2015, he published a book titled Modern Romance, an investigation into love, the internet and online dating. He has repeatedly used his stances on feminism, sexual assault and racism as comedic fuel. He was Hollywood’s nice guy next door.
In his show Master of None, Ansari devised the character of Chef Jeff, a super cool and helpful guy who in the end turns out to be a creepy, gross dude.
On developing the character’s story arc, Ansari said “it was like, ‘Okay, what if this is one of those types of guys and we just get the audience to love him? And then pull the rug out from under them at the end and reveal that he’s actually not a good dude?’”
Ironic, isn’t it?
Read the editor’s note on this article here.