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Posted on 01/18/2018 7:20:13 AM PST by Kaslin
The feminist website Babe published an account of a date gone bad. The pushback has been swift and sharp. I share some of the concerns of the critics, but I also think young women are sending a message that is being missed.
The account by the anonymous "Grace" about a bad date with comedian Aziz Ansari was, if not "3,000 words of revenge porn" (Caitlin Flanagan's phrase), certainly a low journalistic blow. To permit an anonymous accuser to assassinate the character of a famous man is a sucker punch. He may have behaved badly, but even assuming that her entire account is true, nothing she describes seems remotely awful enough to justify the public humiliation to which she has subjected him.
There is no way to know who is behind this. It could be someone with a grudge against Ansari. It could be someone who routinely makes accusations against people. Babe.net was grossly irresponsible to publish it.
But the cultural chord it struck is revealing. There were countless "attagirl" responses to Grace on social media. A recent New Yorker short story, "Cat Person," about a creepy sexual encounter generated a similar buzz. And sympathetic takes on Grace from sites such as Vox and Salon suggest that the #MeToo movement is fast becoming not just a protest of workplace sexual harassment but a broader uprising among young women against today's sexual culture.
To be clear, the critics, including Flanagan, Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan and even Catherine Deneuve, make two essential points. One, it is crucial to make distinctions between behavior that is boorish or uncouth and conduct that is abusive or criminal. Two, women must be forceful and direct in speaking up for themselves, or in Weiss' words, "claiming agency."
But I think we are seeing something much larger than pushback against male predation. What we are seeing in the broader culture now is something that has been evident on college campuses for some time: Women are unhappy about the state of sex and romance. They feel pressured, they feel disrespected, and they are fighting back. Sadly, our culture has so exalted sexual license that the only form of sexual conduct women are permitted to protest is coercion. It should not be surprising, then, that the terms "assault" and "rape" have been expanded beyond reasonable bounds.
Caitlin Flanagan says that Grace "wanted affection, kindness, attention. Perhaps she hoped to maybe even become the famous man's girlfriend." Isn't that what many people want when they embark on a date? What does it say about dating in our time that those are unrealistic expectations? Perhaps Ansari's particular reputation for sensitivity had led Grace to hope. Yet she found in this case, as apparently on many other dates in her life ("I hate men," she texted a friend on her way home), that she "had to say no a lot": "He wanted sex. He wanted to get me drunk and then f--- me."
Grace was bitter and hurt. Yet in our unbuttoned age, her only weapon, as she sees it, is to claim that a crime was committed. "It took a really long time for me to validate this as sexual assault. ... And that's why I confronted so many of my friends and listened to what they had to say, because I wanted validation that it was actually bad."
If you feel used, abused or any of a hundred other negative emotions about a sexual encounter, you are made to feel that you've failed in some way, because everyone else seems to be loving it. But coercion, that's the one Get Out of Jail Free card. If you were "coerced," your bad feelings are validated. He really did do something terrible to you.
Those who chide Grace by insisting that her experience was just "bad sex" are missing the point. It wasn't that the sex was bad -- though it was -- it was that the date was only about sex, and she had hoped for more. In this, I think Grace speaks for many, many women and also some men.
Feminists hate to seem to pine for love and romance, yet their responses to Grace seem to hint at the disappointment the sexual revolution has delivered. 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." Meghan Murphy commented, "The Aziz Ansari stuff is a perfect demonstration of how rape culture works and how men are socialized to feel entitled to sex. No, there was no rape, but this thing where men pester women for sex and don't let up, even when it's clear she isn't into it, IS RAPE CULTURE."
Is it? Or is it the sexual free-for-all they hate? Perhaps the new feminist slogan should be "Down with the sexual revolution!"
For a first encounter/meetup it was tantamount to date rape. Ply her with some liquor and then repeatedly grab her hand and bring it down to your penis.
Bfl
You are correct, it was
Bridgette Bardot has something to say about it.
Godless in Gotham.
When Grace met him at a public fubction (him the star, she a professional photographer) she was on a date with someone else.
Pros need access to content and stars can provide this (a network of clients/friends). From her account she didn’t sound like a starf$cker and he was grabbing her t!ts at his place right after the rushed meal.
Sometimes the ideas that the Left comes up with to win a special Senate election, are much easier to start, than they are to switch off, like, before the elections this fall...
Men should start a #neverdateagain movement.
Men need only to raise their own standards and not fall folly to the “the player” game.
This is insightful.
Brigitte Bardot is 100 percent correct.
Yup!
Me too = “only ME”
A very good response to this story is by Matt Walsh and is titled, “You Feel Violated After Casual Sex Because You Degraded Yourself. Not Because It Was Rape.”
It’s at a site that for some reason isn’t welcome here on FR.
Here’s some of it:
*********
The #MeToo crusaders do seem to have picked up on one important truth. They have gone in entirely the wrong direction with it, and learned all the wrong lessons from it, but they are right, at least, about this: there is something wrong with the way we approach sex in modern society, and it’s leaving a lot of people feeling hurt and abused.
But, beholden always to their narrative, they read a story like Grace’s and automatically interpret it as a struggle between an innocent woman and a depraved rapist of a man. When they hear that Grace felt violated after the fact, they declare that it must have been her “consent” that was violated. After all, the only thing either participant is required to respect is consent. It’s the only rule. The One Commandment. The only thing that can be violated. There are, in the modern mind, only two types of sex: consensual and rape. Whatever falls under the first umbrella must be good. So if a woman feels not-good the next morning, it must have been the not-good type, which means it must have been rape.
But the effort to fit begrudging yet consensual sex into the rape category requires the formation of a bunch of new and confusing and constantly changing rules. The overly simplified “good or rape” formula suddenly turns into an overly complicated calculus, and the only way for a man to really know whether he has committed rape or not is to ask his partner the next day. And even then, she may not make the determination until the following week, or next month after she sees you on TV winning a Golden Globe. And suddenly we have fixed the problem of sex in modern society by turning it into a criminal act. Ironically, conservatives are always accused of wanting to criminalize promiscuity but liberals have actually done it.
Their narratives and formulas have blinded them. They don’t understand that a person can be consensually violated during sex. A woman can unmistakably communicate consent — say, by getting naked in a strange man’s living room and grabbing his genitals — but still wind up feeling degraded and abused by the end of it because her dignity was violated. They don’t understand this concept because they don’t understand that human beings have inherent dignity to begin with. It’s like trying to diagnose a heart condition while denying the existence of the heart.
Here is the reality: Sex that consensually violates the dignity of a person is immoral and harmful, but legal and reciprocal. Casual sex — sex between strangers who just met on Tinder or at a party — is a mutual violation of human dignity. Both partners reduce the other to mere flesh and bone; a set of body parts with no soul or purpose other than to be used as a glorified masturbatory device. This is the essence of casual sex. It’s what makes it casual. And it’s why you have that icky feeling the next morning.
I guess both women and men have to realize the pretence of romance of the former centuries is dead right now. To Have a romance, you have to get someone to actually like and become attached to you. And you have to like or become attached to them, for a romantic relationship. Sex becomes almost non applicable. Both men and women can “fall in love” or become attached and want to be with someone, either with or without the act of sex having happened. Sex is not going to make either partner become attached. Not having sex is also not going to make either partner become attached.
So treat sex as a bio function and as a way to exchange bacterial populations with someone (be careful). And develop relationships with all the people in your life and pay attention to their personalities, moralities, lifestyle, and ability to be a good friend. It seems we have separated orgasm from love. Is this a good thing? I don’t even know. It just is.
1. Generalize much, Jessica?
2. It is patently obvious that this article is horribly sexist, since it promotes the narrative that there are non-negligible differences between men and women. / s
In the feminist worldview, couldn't one just as easily reverse the roles of the two parties involved here?
Seriously: I can't believe how some commentators on tv or online are calling the anonymous accuser "courageous" for her behavior. Since when is writing poison-pen letters / making anonymous, unproven (and actually unprovable) accusations courageous?
Regards,
“It wasn’t that the sex was bad — though it was — it was that the date was only about sex, and she had hoped for more”.
“Grace” should have upfront told the guy what she was looking for: commitment, love, etc. Guys cannot read your mind.
Second, did the actor force her to drink? I mean, literally, grab her neck and pour the liquor down her throat? Where is her responsibility to HERSELF? Is she a ragdoll?
If the “date” went down the way she described it, she is just as at fault as he is. He for being a cad. She for wanting the “excitement” that comes with dating a famous person but claiming ZERO responsibility for her own actions or lack there of.
I call BS on this one.
Most of the ‘metoo’ are BS. I’m a man, just for the record, and I could make a pretty good list of assaults by drunken college girls, as well as a couple of blatant sexual assaults by married women when I was young and single.
Of course, since I’m male, it doesn’t count, and since I’m white and Christian. Strike 3. OUT
Yes, I too miss the days when you would just get slapped for asking a girl if she knew the difference between a big Mac and a bj.
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