https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfpj5qQr9KA
created by flyforasuburbanguy on 17/02/2025 at 01:27 UTC
589 upvotes, 26 top-level comments (showing 25)
Comment by badass_panda at 17/02/2025 at 12:13 UTC*
858 upvotes, 7 direct replies
I remember hearing about this at the time, and thinking that it just sounded like a bad date -- this lady did a much better job than the media at the time of actually telling the story of what happened.
I'm a bisexual man, I've had this sort of encounter myself (generally with other men). It really feels terrible in the moment and afterward, and I think one of the foundational issues is that our culture doesn't have the language to discuss what it is, and why it feels so bad.
We have this binary ... "Consensual", eliciting the idea that it is perfectly consensual, and "rape", which brings to mind drugging someone or physically raping them. Nothing in between, no real language to describe that coercive experience. It shows you what we've valued as a culture ... Imagine if we had no word for something that is in between "friendship" and "murder".
Comment by MadCervantes at 17/02/2025 at 16:44 UTC
120 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Elizabeth Bruenig had an opinion piece from a progressive Christian perspective shortly after the original allegations. I thought it was interesting because it basically argued that consent is the absolute bare minimum. The sexual revolution has not actually happened because liberation of sexuality isn't just getting rid of barriers to sexuality but also actually treating every person in the interaction as valuable human beings.
Comment by AngronOfTheTwelfth at 17/02/2025 at 04:26 UTC
330 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The Aziz situation was far worse than I remember thinking it was at the time. This woman is very eloquent and has me thinking about some situations I've been in where I did not see or did not want to see resistance for what it was.
Comment by get_off_my_lawn_n0w at 17/02/2025 at 16:58 UTC
87 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Watched the whole thing, and 100% agreed with it.
I don't have a "here's what to do instead." Just that I agree with her assessment. Under this assessment, though, I would 100% guarantee everyone has both assaulted and been assaulted.
Example me;
All of my sexual interactions were initiated by women who kissed me first. Some of them weren't with negotiated enthusiastic consent. Some I went along with because *"That's what men are supposed to do!" If an attractive woman wants to, who would say no?* I literally didn't know I had the right to refuse. In hindsight, I wanted to say no. I didn't.
There are numerous other instances within my life that would qualify as me having been sexually assaulted.
Conversely, my first ever long-term gf was a street kid. That first night bothers me. We were flirting in the bar, and there was no expectation of success. It was just flirting. She called me later and came over. I thought, "booty call!" and now I wonder. Did she just need a warm place to sleep? Today, I would have made up the couch and not done anything. That night, I saw coldness and resistance. I recognized it and basically kept probing around it. I kept looking for a way beyond the established boundaries. It bothers me deeply that I might have pushed her till she felt "might as well get it over with" or, worse, she felt that a condition of her stay was sex. We dated off and on for a couple of years. So maybe it was ok, or maybe it wasn't.
The idea that my friend might one day think I hurt her is nauseating to me. I've stayed up nights worrying about it. It's eating me up far more than all the other lifetime of trauma. How would I even ask forgiveness for it?
Even now, I worry about this in my 24 year marriage. I'm constantly asking my wife, are you ok with me doing this or touching you this way? I mean, just because she was ok with it yesterday or two minutes ago,
It's tough as hell.
Comment by Jealous-Factor7345 at 17/02/2025 at 01:51 UTC*
547 upvotes, 10 direct replies
I've always felt that Aziz essay wasnt really appropriate to be lumped in with all the metoo stuff, and so I almost turned the video off after the first 30seconds when she called him a "sexual abuser".
But I'm glad I listened for longer. She had a clear-eyed, interesting, and nuanced approach, which we could definitely use more of. I haven't finished the video yet, but I'll definitely get to it.
Edit: Ok. I finally reread the babe.net[1] article, then finished the video. Ultimately I found less agreement and nuance than I was expecting. As I mentioned in a comment down below, it’s always weird to be in a position of “defending” someone who, in my opinion, did not behave as ethically or kindly as he should have. But no, I don’t think what was described in the article was sexual assault or abuse. I think it was much more about two people operating under two totally different and unspoken rules of conduct, with neither willing to actually bridge the gap in expectations with clear verbal communication. I get that lots of folks, especially here, really really disagree with this take, but it’s where I landed back when I first read it, and its where I land now.
1: https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355
One thing I really agree with the video about is that this is almost the perfect case study for considering how we do and should approach sexual ethics. People read this account and come away with VERY different opinions about the gravity of Aziz’s behavior and the relative responsibilities of him and his date.
I’ve always had a number of different take-aways personally from this event.
Comment by mixedveggies at 17/02/2025 at 17:41 UTC
102 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Woman here. At the time, one of the most painful things about the story breaking was my mom telling me that the ladies in her bookclub were calling the woman a slut, saying she shouldn’t have put herself in this position, what did she expect, she was naked, she was drinking, leading him on and so on.
When MeToo broke, I considered myself so lucky to not have been “actually” assaulted. Sure I had been cat-called and stuff, but not attacked! But this type of coercive sexual encounter had happened to me dozens of times. I would tell men we could make out but not have sex and they would beg for oral. Or they would try to push for sex on our first date even if I wanted to wait. Then would say mean things or text me the next day to break up like “what’s the point if I’m not getting any?”
It was so hurtful but I didn’t even think I was entitled to better treatment, I was 22, 23 and I thought this was just how dating was.
Aziz had built his whole career till that point about “not being one of those guys.” He literally wrote the book on it. So it wasn’t that he was a criminal so much that I didn’t want to trust his opinion anymore. It felt very seedy, like men were all conspiring to say one thing publicly and do the opposite in private.
And then the women of my community who raised me were like, yes. This is your burden to navigate. A very dark time indeed.
Comment by denanon92 at 18/02/2025 at 10:13 UTC
27 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Honestly, hearing about incidents like what Aziz Ansari helps me understand why dating advice in progressive circles is often obtuse about the mechanics of dating for men, like how the advice avoids discussing what groups to join to meet women, how to flirt, or how to ask a woman out. We are all at this cultural crossroad now where we recognize that our American dating culture is built on misogyny yet we have no clear roadmap for what the alternative is, and where we still have to navigate the current dating system in order to find a partner. Online dating apps exploit their (mostly male) users and reinforce the same prejudices and entitlements that people in the real world have. And increasing atomization and isolation make in-person socialization even harder, and may lead people to lean even further into harmful beliefs about romance to increase their chances of entering a relationship.
Another problem is that we as a society need to completely overhaul our expectations around dating. Dating advice often states that our lives shouldn't revolve around romance and that we should work on ourselves first, yet most people still treat being single as something shameful and something that should only be temporary. These expectations even pop up in left-leaning subreddits spaces without commenters realizing it. It's this contradiction between understanding that no one is entitled to a relationship, yet where having a relationship is still considered an essential part of being an adult. Men in relationships do get treated as more mature and more "safe" than those who are single. What's worse is that right-wing recruiting is good at identifying this contradiction and appealing to men on the idea that conservative policies and far-right politicians can give them back the relationships they're still expected to obtain. It's a much harder sell to tell young men that they shouldn't expect to be married or even have a long-term relationship like their parents did, and that they need to be prepared to navigate an increasingly lonely social climate.
Comment by flyforasuburbanguy at 17/02/2025 at 01:29 UTC
161 upvotes, 11 direct replies
How do we as a culture find a balance between holding men like this accountable while also understanding they are performing a script that is often forced upon them?
Comment by YesIAmRightWing at 17/02/2025 at 17:40 UTC
8 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Does anyone have a link to the original essay?
Comment by ASufferingAtlantaFan at 17/02/2025 at 03:37 UTC
13 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Olurinatti always has bangers, I love her content so much
Comment by Bangoga at 18/02/2025 at 06:51 UTC
13 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I don't know how to feel about this since I haven't watched the video yet but I will soon enough.
But from my recalling off this incident, I remember it being seen initially as the same box as other incidents in the metoo era and then being seen retrospectively as bad a date (I'm still not sure what I perceive it as, it was uncomfortable non the less)
My only majorly different opinion then and still now is that Aziz and his race and the stereotype of brown men plays into how people perceived and wrote about that incident more than alot of us would like to admit it. I was in university back then, and I know how prevalent the stereotype of "creepy brown guy" was. You'd have folks talking about "creepy brown guy at club" for doing the same things white guys did but one was demonized while the other was tolerated (both being wrong for maybe pushing boundaries in the club scene)
Just a food for thought or discussion idk, just something that always held with me with this specific case
Comment by AsexualArowana at 18/02/2025 at 00:12 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I feel like he should've picked up on the very loud implication that she didn't want to have sex with him that night.
Comment by krooskontroll at 17/02/2025 at 16:54 UTC
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I hadn't heard about this before, but that was very hard to listen to. Must be awful to be put in such a situation.
Comment by Marionberry_007 at 17/02/2025 at 15:40 UTC
34 upvotes, 5 direct replies
Has anyone seen the Signified B sides video on Amber Heard? Anyone willing to reconsider their opinion on that debacle given the mass propaganda that swayed millions as it also did in Aziz' favor back in the day?
Or are we still not there yet lol
Comment by kohlakult at 17/02/2025 at 16:16 UTC*
14 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I remember a scene in Master of None where he *kind of* coerces the female lead who he's interested in, to kiss him, that made me uncomfy.
It's mild, but I noticed, and this was before this story came out. Thanks for the video.
Comment by man_bored_at_work at 17/02/2025 at 08:21 UTC
14 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Interesting look at the topic, but I skipped to the Aziz bit. She says that its the journalist's own recounting of the story. Not true, it's an editorialised writing of her friend's experience, and if I remember correctly, the friend believed that she was misrepresented and taken advantage of by the journalist.
Comment by 1Zbychu11 at 18/02/2025 at 09:04 UTC
14 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I mean, you could say that the story presented in the original article is only one side of the story, but if what was written is true, than it was definitely a sexual assault and it's kinda hard for me to understand how one wouldn't see it as such unless they think that sexual assaults have to be brutal and involve physical fighting.
According to the article, he was doing everything to her, he undressed her, kissed her, put his fingers into her mouth, into her vagina etc. All actions were done or initiated by him. She tried to protest multiple times either by saying she's not comfortable or by pulling away. And when she did protest, he just kept pushing and doing stuff to her, violating her. At 'best', she complied with some things without protest.
That's more or less how majority of sexual assaults and rapes look like.
Here's the article: https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355
Comment by hoodiecookie at 17/02/2025 at 20:50 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Our society and legal institutions currently imagine rape as a stranger jumping out of the bushes with a knife and carrying out the act of rape with physical force.
In reality, rape is usually carried out by someone the victim knows. Also, although society's current conception of rape is nonconseusal sex using physical force or the threat of physical force, there's strong arguments that mental force should be considered as well. In the case of State v. Rusk, Rusk/the defendant requested that the woman/plaintiff give him a ride home. When she got to his unfamiliar neighborhood, it was dark and empty. She testified later that she feared that he would rape her because of "the way that he looked at me" and kept telling her to come inside, despite her repeated refusals. He then took her car keys out of the ignition and didn't give them back. He told her to follow him inside, which she did because he had her car keys and couldn't leave. When inside, she continuously asked to leave, and he kept saying "no." She said, "if I do what you want, will you let me go without killing me?" and started crying. He lightly started choking her and said yes, then forced her to perform oral sex and intercourse. (The woman later testified that in hindsight, she should have honked the horn, done a million other things, but was scared and didn't do any of them.)
The court eventually did find that was rape, but it was close. Only because of the point where he was lightly choking her, they found the required element of physical force, and was able to conclude that he raped her. Without the choking, they might not have found that that was rape. Under many people's understanding of rape, perhaps, that wouldn't count as rape, despite many obvious indicators that it she was unconsenting and feared for her life, because of the lack of physical force. (In some states, mental force is considered as well.)
What's also really interesting is Judge Cole's dissent. He argued that this wasn't rape. He argued that at no point did the woman resist physically, nor did she make it clear that she regarding having sex with Rusk as "abhorrent and repugnant." He said that fear wasn't enough to prove rape, nor an indescribable look in a man's eyes to prove his intent. He found it "incredible" that on these facts, the majority found that this was forced.
Cole was the first black man on the Maryland Supreme Court. He was likely thinking about all of the many cases where white women would have consensual sex with black men, then scream rape. Or cases where white women would accuse black men of sexual crimes because of the look in their eyes. He was saying through his dissent, "white woman, show me you *actually* resisted."
Cole's dissent is problematic in another way though, in the fact that it forgets black women. While his view may enable greater protections of black men, it leaves black women vulnerable, especially considering the really awful stereotypes of black women and their sexuality, which has been historically used by white men to rape them without any legal consequence.
Anyways, my own opinion is that consent should be affirmative, *generally* excluding some certain situations where affirmative consent isn't needed (a long-term couple's weekly, happily celebrated sex night, for example). Also, defining rape/consensual sex as such incentivizes people, if they are not sure their partner wants to actually have sex, to *actually make sure* that their partner is consenting.
Comment by cruciferousvegan at 18/02/2025 at 20:01 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
That was a phenomenal video, thank you OP.
Comment by InsaneComicBooker at 17/02/2025 at 14:32 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
adding this to my too watch list, thanks
Comment by optionalhero at 17/02/2025 at 12:25 UTC
12 upvotes, 2 direct replies
TLDW?
Comment by Valuable-Owl-9896 at 19/02/2025 at 12:44 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
So Aziz really did assault the woman, why is everyone calling him innocent?
Comment by cakebatterchapstick at 17/02/2025 at 22:17 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
When this story came out, I wanted to vomit because it sounded like every sexual encounter I had up until that point. And she was right, it’s fucking violating.
Comment by LadyPreshPresh at 17/02/2025 at 14:05 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
“Four most beautiful words in the human language-you wore me down.” -Tom Haverford
Comment by douchebaganon at 18/02/2025 at 15:47 UTC
0 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Can someone give me the tldr?