By Catherine Abes, Editor-in-chief at Her Campus Ryerson
Read the original article, “Ansari misconduct forces #MeToo movement to address gray areas”, here.
Last week Julianna wasn’t sure what to pitch. She texted me and asked if there was anything I thought HC should cover. I texted her back and said “what about the Aziz Ansari thing?”
I was immediately nervous after this. Not because I had any doubts in Julianna (if you’ve read the article then you know that it’s good). Rather I was scared, as an editor, by the responsibility of making sure we got this story right. I had already seen the impact of getting it wrong.
I didn’t give Julianna any direction for this story; she nailed it on her own. But I’ll tell you why I didn’t ask her to change anything: as stated in the headline, Grace’s situation fell into a gray area in terms of consent and sexual assault. The point of this article was not to contribute our two cents to the debate on how this situation can be defined or what precisely happened, as many columnists have done since babe.net’s initial publication. Instead, Julianna carefully and expertly analyzes the response to Grace’s story and the consequences for the #MeToo movement, and most importantly, how this moves us forward.
It might seem contradictory to make the point that we need to dissect and explore the gray area, only to omit our own analysis of the situation. However, as a media outlet I don’t think it is our place to assert what is or isn’t the right answer—the conversation is ongoing. Furthermore, I do not believe that Grace’s story is the vessel through which we’re going to deconstruct society’s ideologies around consent and relationships. It was certainly the starting point, but I think there were errors in the handling of the story that have left it too vulnerable to scrutiny. The aggressive debate surrounding the credibility and motive of the article sadly drowns out the conversation we need to be having. That’s why there are no photos of Ansari. That’s why there is no analysis of the quality of babe’s work. That’s why I made the choice to attribute the story as babe’s account of the events, not Grace’s. I didn’t want to overshadow Julianna’s main point.
The parts that we did include from babe’s article were basic context for what we meant by gray area. I debated on leaving a summary out all together, but I wanted this article to be accessible to people who were not familiar with the story. Julianna did a really good job in summarizing what was said in the article and I stand behind it. We did not attempt to retell, we simply stated what babe described in their account. No conclusions are drawn.
As one of HC Ryerson’s editors I am never going to discourage a writer from covering a topic because it’s difficult—I think this is a crucial conversation to have and I’m truly happy with Julianna’s contribution. If there’s anything I took from babe purely as an editor, it’s that taking the time to edit and tell the story right can have an impact that becomes bigger than the story itself. I feel that HC Ryerson has been successful, but I implore anyone with any concerns or comments on our coverage of the topic to shoot me an email at ryerson@hercampus.com.
Let’s keep the conversation going.