OP-ED: Dear allies, why the Aziz Ansari allegation is still important
This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of PERIOD
It’s been about six months since Babe.net published an account by an anonymous woman (“Grace”) detailing a painful sexual encounter she had with comedian Aziz Ansari. The public outroar following the story was a myriad mix of postulations on whether or not Grace was entitled to label the experience as sexual assault. For the sake of brevity, I’ll assume that if you’re reading this you’re generally aware of the details of the allegation against Ansari (if you aren’t, I encourage you to read Vox’s thoughtful dissection of the subject and reactions to it, linked here), and I’ll also summarize my opinion on Grace’s story promptly: I believe her and think her story deserves our ears, eyes, and activism.
You might be wondering — why am I revisiting this now, six months after the fact? Has something key happened? Did you miss something? The answer to the latter two questions is no — all that has occurred since the allegation went viral is Ansari’s ongoing hiatus from public affairs, including his Netflix show, Master of None. And to the first question, the answer is this: this article is not being written in spite of the period of time since the allegation, but because of it. In the past six months, it seems that we have been so preoccupied with deciding whether or not to “cancel” Ansari that we have failed altogether in comprehending the significance of this allegation. After an entire half a year, we have still not addressed the incident properly.
As has been said by many a journalist and activist within the past six months, what is so important about the Ansari allegation is its commonality. Many critics have labeled Grace’s experience as “not that bad,” citing the mass of similar experiences other women/non-binary (NB) folks have faced without sounding any public alarms. However, this citation actually proves the necessity of Grace’s story, showing just how desensitized we are to the disrespect of women’s/NB folks’ bodies. The statement that Grace’s mere discomfort does not elicit the label of “assault” points to a wider problem of sexual ignorance and denial of consent: when we exclude women’s/NB folks’ comfort from the discussion of sex while accommodating the desires of men, we inevitably brew assault-prone sexual behavior among the latter. What is frightening about Grace’s account is not just her mere discomfort, but the prospect of something more sinister: Ansari’s alleged ignorance of Grace’s requests and rejections suggested the potential of increasingly violent actions. In looking at sexual misconduct which to some seems benign, we need to remember that all ignorance of consent lies along the same line as rape. If a woman/NB person feels uncomfortable in a sexual situation, it is often due to a very valid fear of further infliction of trauma. We live in a culture that intentionally and enthusiastically teaches men to disrespect the pleasure, requests, and consent of women/NB folks — as a woman/NB person in a space with a man exhibiting those traits, it is beyond logical to be afraid.
And so we can’t look at the Ansari case and dismiss it because it’s “not that bad”, because our definition of “that bad” is far too extreme. In an age when the media is covering sexual assault more than it ever has, we must ask ourselves: Why does it take the most gruesome, extreme cases of rape for us to talk about sexual misconduct? Why are ostensibly smaller incidents of assault met with criticism and judged for their worth instead of being taken under the wing of the movement like other, “bigger” stories? If we’re only paying attention to those who have already done the absolutely worst unthinkable thing, we’re failing in our mission. We have to stop rating the horror of survivor’s stories. We have to learn to simply sit down, listen, and help so further trauma can go un-inflicted.
In the craze of cases that have begun flooding into the mainstream, we have forgotten what was already there: the failure to listen, the way people are asked out, complimented, judged, objectified. The things in the everyday that we fail to strike down; the things that lead to the experiences Grace and countless women/NB folks like her have had with men who were never told to stop and think. The Ansari allegation, now six months old, requires continual revisitation. It is not an excuse to sort someone into “cancelled” or “accepted” like an item on a hot-or-not list. It is not an opportunity to forgive your #problematicfave, either. It is an opportunity to reflect on how you respect consent in your everyday life, whether in your language, your jokes, your compliments, or your sex. It’s an opportunity to recognize your desensitization to the culture around you, and your job as an ally to correct the things you’ve become blind to over time. Because, if we don’t pay attention to the little things, to the microaggressions, to the small but no less meaningful failures of people to respect consent or lack thereof, we’ll always get to the predators when it’s too late.
