I need to focus.
I'm not doing a good job of keeping up here. In the last few days, that's been mainly because I keep wasting my free time reading different perspectives on the Aziz Ansari thing, picking it apart and thinking about how Aziz could have behaved better (I don't believe it was assault, but he was really annoyingly pushy) AND how the girl could have ( Read more... )
The first thing that I know in myself that goes right out the window whenever I feel unsafe is my ability to be honest about what I want - if I'm feeling unsafe, I'm prioritizing "do and say whatever will wind up in me experiencing the least harm" way over "do and say what I really want or need right now." What struck me about the Aziz story was how the woman seemed to describe feeling increasingly unsafe around him (without directly using those words), so I can completely relate to her inability to voice "no" until it was literally her last resort to avoid more harm.
Honestly, I think there's never been much education about behaving empathetically (even if you aren't actually feeling empathetic) during sexual encounters, and that's the root cause and solution to all the issues with so-called ambiguous assault. Of course, there will be people who choose not to behave empathetically, and they should always be punished for it in whatever way society deems appropriate, but I think most people if you frame a situation with "not respecting someone's wishes about how you treat their body and not making them feel safe enough to express those wishes HURTS them" would choose to not hurt other people.
Lastly, while I think it's incredibly important that Aziz is called out on this, and I don't think it's right to mince words or try to brush it off, it also seems like he's the kind of person that an empathy lesson would work on. Hopefully he stops trying to minimize what the woman has said and had experienced, accepts his responsibility, apologizes, and demonstrates that he learned from this mistake and becomes a better person for it.
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I think there's a spectrum of empathy capability, where some, like Aziz, can move toward the more empathetic end and sex will be better for a lot of people. People who just needed to be clued in. Some of it is age, too, I think -- I would imagine that there's a lot more pressuring from teenage boys than men in their 20s and older.
But I also think that there are a lot of assholes out there who are only thinking of themselves, and in those cases they need to be actively prevented somehow from doing what they will do if they can get away with it. I think of Harvey Weinstein, or Brock Turner -- I don't think all the sensitivity training in the world could prevent men like that from doing whatever they feel they're entitled to. Those are the ones I'm worried about, and the people like them who enable them, and then those people who are somehow able to turn a blind eye to it. And then the fact that someone like Harvey Weinstein has tremendous power, the ability to give people something they desperately want ... wow. It makes it so much harder to prevent.
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I also put the Harvey Weinstein and Brock Turner cases is a separate bucket - they're completely UNambiguous. And I agree, they and their ilk need serious measures to prevent, stop, and punish.
I think (for me) the problem with the anti-Grace articles is that sex doesn't exist in only two realms: non-criminal, consensual, good sex and criminal, non-consensual, bad sex. Something can be non-consensual and worthy of terms like "assault" without being criminal. Something can be consensual and good while technically being criminal. Neither of those two realms contains completely mutually exclusive descriptors, and I see nothing to be gained from trying to draw such a clean line like the anti-Grace crowd wants to do.
No one called Aziz out as a criminal and no one is pressing criminal charges (nor could they, based on what I understand of assault and rape laws in NY); Grace called him out as having assaulted her and not sought consent with her, which I believe is a completely accurate portrayal and totally worthy of discussion. The goal should be to eliminate criminal sex (obviously, but also become more reasonable with what is considered criminal - e.g. anti-sodomy laws still exist), non-consensual sex (not quite as obviously), and non-egalitarian, power-driven sex (not at all obviously).
I see nothing wrong with establishing three realms, if we're going to start drawing lines: good sex (which requires actual consent and is completely non-criminal), grey sex (any of the factors is iffy - such as consent-under-duress, or it doesn't fit cleanly in either of the other two buckets), and bad sex (non-consensual and/or criminal). Why on earth would someone want to discourage people from taking steps to eliminate grey sex along with bad sex? That's what it seems like the backlash is trying to do, along with piling on some age-old victim-blaming for good measure ("she should have tried harder not to get assaulted!"). No one is arguing that grey sex should result in life in prison, but it should definitely result in being called out. For Pete's sake, people call out children for not saying "please" or "thank you" - how is grey sex worthy of being exempted from reprimand?
(BTW, sorry for the multiple e-mails - the form kept submitting itself while I was still typing. Bizarre!)
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Haha. You have such a way of getting right to the point.
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