So here’s what Aziz Ansari (who’s not as famous as he thinks because I’ve never heard of him) did-
He and this photographer met at a party and over a mutual interest in cameras flirted a bit verbally. She was probably impressed by his celebrity (Netflix? Nope, still don’t get it. More obscure than Basic Cable.) and I imagine she was fair to middling attractive (he on the other hand is a hot mess even accounting for taste). They were both with other people.
He hit her up for her phone number (something you’ll extract from me only under waterboarding) and then started text bantering. I imagine he initiated it because he didn’t give her his number.
Eventually they agreed to have a date. They met at his apartment, had a drink, and went out to an Oyster Bar.
They didn’t stay long. When they got back to his place she made some chit chat about his counters, he invited her to sit on them (umm… why would you want to do that?) and then he started kissing her.
Let me repeat that. He started kissing her.
Folks, that was the moment this stopped being a date.
“In a second, his hand was on my breast.” Then he was undressing her, then he undressed himself. She remembers feeling uncomfortable at how quickly things escalated.
When Ansari told her he was going to grab a condom within minutes of their first kiss, Grace voiced her hesitation explicitly. “I said something like, ‘Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill.’” She says he then resumed kissing her, briefly performed oral sex on her, and asked her to do the same thing to him. She did, but not for long. “It was really quick. Everything was pretty much touched and done within ten minutes of hooking up, except for actual sex.”
Huh wha?!
Now a lot of photons have been spilled on whether Ansari actually committed Assault or not. I remind you Assault can be mere words, but if you touch someone…
That’s Battery.
Men, and I am chromosome damaged myself so I can use that word, this is not how you treat equals. You look them in the eye (ok, so I’m not actually very good at that because I have severe self esteem issues and am very shy, normally I stare off into the middle distance somewhere) and not at whatever bits you find sexually distracting so you can ignore what they are saying.
I also have interruption issues because regardless of any other characteristic about you I am completely convinced that I know more about the subject under discussion than you do. It’s frequently true. I am arrogant and vain and it comes from a lifetime of privilege.
But at least I have tried to train myself to overcome these failings and as ignorant as I ever was I never kissed a woman, she always kissed me. I never touched a woman except in places she touched me first.
That’s just manners.
The reason this infuriates me today is not just the clueless Saturday Night Live sketch this weekend, but that Morning Joe and any number of “Liberal” commentators are pretending that this is some kind of moral “gray area”.
This is a red line!
There is no “ah” or “umm” or “watch it” anymore than there is about race. It’s cut and dried.
Do you find that funny?
I feel compelled to remind you that what racists, bigots, and misogynists chiefly desire is not just that we tolerate their abhorrent behavior, they want us to applaud it; to laugh at their minstrel shows and drunken Irish jokes, and admire their sexual “conquests”.
These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
Should Aziz Ansari be labeled a Sex Criminal and publicly register and be forbidden from coming within a quarter mile of Schools?
Maybe not, but there is no denying that what he did was not just stupid, but bad, evil; and if he is shunned by his audience and never performs in public again it’s a fate he justly deserves.