New York City, N.Y., Jan 19, 2018 / 15:00 pm
There are better models of fraternal correction than telling the story of the horrible night you spent with comedian Aziz Ansari to a reporter from a casually crude website. But that was where "Grace" (a pseudonym) went to express what she didn't have a way to say to Ansari-that he had hounded her physically; pressured her to go farther, faster than she wanted; and left her feeling wretched after their night together.
Grace spoke up, she said, because she saw Ansari wearing a "Times Up" pin and supporting the #MeToo movement, and she couldn't see how he reconciled his support of women generally with the way he treated her particularly.
Grace's story sparked many reactions. But if Aziz Ansari is reading all the thinkpieces about him, he must feel most ill-served by his allies. "Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader" wrote Bari Weiss for the New York Times, exonerating Ansari in a singularly insulting way.
It's unreasonable, Weiss and others write, to expect Ansari and other men to be able to know if they're scaring or upsetting their one-night-stands. The solution isn't for men to pay attention to women's non-verbal cues, she writes, but for women to be much more aggressive in fending off men who make them feel uncomfortable or unsafe.