[Content warning for sexual harassment, coercion, and assault, brief mentions of other violence, victim blaming, and some language]
When we hear stories about sexual assault and scroll through the endless posts under the hashtag of #MeToo on any social media platform, it often involves a similar story being told repeatedly - different iterations that involve different people, different circumstances, but it's generally incidents where the "no" is stated, clear as a bell, and the perpetrator barrels through anyway, clear as a bigger, more intimidating bell. These stories are pretty universally sympathized with within the #MeToo movement, and other feminist movements, and are met with words of sympathy, care, and validation.
Then there's cases that test how far our sympathy might stretch.
I'm referring specifically to the Aziz Ansari incident.
This article was pretty widespread when it first broke in January of 2018, but to recap: Aziz Ansari, Refinery29's "certified woke bae", went on a date with someone who is only known to us as Grace. It started out innocently as dinner and wine, but Ansari was eager to leave and bring Grace home. Once they arrived at Ansari's apartment, it quickly spiraled into a whirlwind of touching, kissing, and groping that moved far too fast for Grace's liking. Despite that Grace made her discomfort clear several times through both nonverbal body language (such as trying to move away from him, only to be followed) and verbally telling him that she wanted to "relax" (and at one point straight up telling him "no"), he continued to kiss her when she wasn't kissing back, moving her hand to his genitals when she was trying to pull it away, and pressuring her for sex when she was clearly trying to do literally anything but that.
To me, Grace's cues seem pretty clear, but the internet apparently says nay-nay. Searching "Aziz Ansari" or perusing the comments of any article related to this incident will bring you opinions such as "any woman who would use the term 'sexual assault' to define this situation has never experienced it themselves" and "'Grace' was not sexually assaulted. Aziz Ansari deserves an apology. The public deserves better."
The second comment, linked above, goes on to say "Are we supposed to categorize every bad date, every time we didn’t get something we wanted, every time we misread or are misread, as sexual assault? If so, every single person is automatically a rapist."
Well... sorry boo, but... yeah, kinda. Sexual assault in the form of coercion is incredibly rampant, because we as a culture have decided that whoever is being generally less aggressive/dominant in bed is little more than a prop for the more dominant person to use to get their rocks off, never mind that person's bodily autonomy. As an anonymous blogger wrote in her piece responding to this incident, "And yes, guys, what Grace described is totally normal for a woman. This is a normal sex encounter. The women that you're seeing scoff at her? They aren't scoffing because they think a guy would never do that. They're scoffing because they believe every single word she said. They don't have to imagine it either." She goes on to say "if what happened to her is a violation, then we are all violated. And everyone is a violator. And that's a scary fucking world to live in. I don't want that to be the world I live in. Can it be that we are so okay with being hurt as women that we are skeptical of the idea that sex shouldn't be humiliating or scary? FUCK. I THOUGHT THIS WAS A ROM-COM."
Victims and survivors of sexual assault often turn to saying "it's not that bad" to either 1) encourage people to push back and say "actually, no, that's kinda fucked up", or 2) as their way of coping with it, because they don't want to think of themselves as someone who was assaulted, or think of the assaulter as... well, an assaulter. We, as a species, generally want to assume the best of other members of our species, and are willing to secure those rose-tinted glasses with gorilla glue if we have to.
I was stuck in that sinking ship for years. Throughout my high school years, I had a friend with benefits that I regularly had consensual encounters with. But at least half, if not more, of those encounters only became "consensual" because he would pressure and harass me for hours, days at a time until I finally gave in, not because I wanted to have sex, but because I wanted him to leave me alone and was scared of what he would do if I didn't. I may have been all but forced to agree, but I did not consent. Convincing myself that these encounters were consensual let me brush off the times where he actively blew through my no's, my physically pushing away, much easier. Instances of actual, active sexual assault became easier to just toss into the mix of instances where I didn't want it, but just stopped fighting. As the anonymous blogger did, I locked all of these in the box that contained my files of "meh" sexual encounters and left it at that for many, many years.
Continuing to tell people that their experiences are "not that bad" sets a dangerous precedent for continually upping the ante for what's allowed to count.
Oh, they ignored your verbal and nonverbal cues that you weren't into it? At least they didn't leave bruises.
You had to physically struggle against them and have bruises? At least they didn't kill you.
They killed you? At least it was quick and dirty, and not a super drawn-out and painful death.
They physically, mentally, and sexually tortured you for days before slowly murdering you in cold blood, burning the evidence and leaving the country? Oh, fine, ya got me there.
This may seem like an exaggeration, but it's something that a lot of people hear every day. It's something that a lot of people internalize every day. With that internalization comes the idea that what happened to you, personally, will never be enough to "count".
Part of that is not wanting to see yourself as a victim, or have other people see you as a victim.
Part of that is knowing that no matter how bad you had it, you will likely never receive validation from the Executive Board of the VIP Victim's Club™, or its supporters (which, at the moment, happens to be the vast majority of society).
Consent can be very subjective, and each person might show their "yes" and "no" differently. But we should be educating people that generally, if someone is not participating in the act, is trying to move away from you, is verbally telling you that they want to relax, that we should take this moment to talk about what they do want to do. Use it as an opportunity to set ground rules for the encounter and figure out what each person really wants, rather than assuming that if you keep going, they'll warm up to it eventually.
For Ansari, this is a blip on his radar. His ratings and views might go down a little, but in approximately two months, he can sweep this under the rug and pretend it never happened.
For Grace, this is something that will stick with her. The experience in and of itself will stay as a reminder that maybe it's easier to just give in to a violation of your body, than have to fight it constantly. The backlash she's gotten will remind her that people won't stick up for her if she does try to fight it. It's a losing game anyway.
These are the lessons that get ingrained in our brains when encounters like this happen. Let's get our shit together so that half the world's population (or more) isn't subconsciously or consciously traumatized, yeah?
When we hear stories about sexual assault and scroll through the endless posts under the hashtag of #MeToo on any social media platform, it often involves a similar story being told repeatedly - different iterations that involve different people, different circumstances, but it's generally incidents where the "no" is stated, clear as a bell, and the perpetrator barrels through anyway, clear as a bigger, more intimidating bell. These stories are pretty universally sympathized with within the #MeToo movement, and other feminist movements, and are met with words of sympathy, care, and validation.
Then there's cases that test how far our sympathy might stretch.
I'm referring specifically to the Aziz Ansari incident.
This article was pretty widespread when it first broke in January of 2018, but to recap: Aziz Ansari, Refinery29's "certified woke bae", went on a date with someone who is only known to us as Grace. It started out innocently as dinner and wine, but Ansari was eager to leave and bring Grace home. Once they arrived at Ansari's apartment, it quickly spiraled into a whirlwind of touching, kissing, and groping that moved far too fast for Grace's liking. Despite that Grace made her discomfort clear several times through both nonverbal body language (such as trying to move away from him, only to be followed) and verbally telling him that she wanted to "relax" (and at one point straight up telling him "no"), he continued to kiss her when she wasn't kissing back, moving her hand to his genitals when she was trying to pull it away, and pressuring her for sex when she was clearly trying to do literally anything but that.
To me, Grace's cues seem pretty clear, but the internet apparently says nay-nay. Searching "Aziz Ansari" or perusing the comments of any article related to this incident will bring you opinions such as "any woman who would use the term 'sexual assault' to define this situation has never experienced it themselves" and "'Grace' was not sexually assaulted. Aziz Ansari deserves an apology. The public deserves better."
The second comment, linked above, goes on to say "Are we supposed to categorize every bad date, every time we didn’t get something we wanted, every time we misread or are misread, as sexual assault? If so, every single person is automatically a rapist."
Well... sorry boo, but... yeah, kinda. Sexual assault in the form of coercion is incredibly rampant, because we as a culture have decided that whoever is being generally less aggressive/dominant in bed is little more than a prop for the more dominant person to use to get their rocks off, never mind that person's bodily autonomy. As an anonymous blogger wrote in her piece responding to this incident, "And yes, guys, what Grace described is totally normal for a woman. This is a normal sex encounter. The women that you're seeing scoff at her? They aren't scoffing because they think a guy would never do that. They're scoffing because they believe every single word she said. They don't have to imagine it either." She goes on to say "if what happened to her is a violation, then we are all violated. And everyone is a violator. And that's a scary fucking world to live in. I don't want that to be the world I live in. Can it be that we are so okay with being hurt as women that we are skeptical of the idea that sex shouldn't be humiliating or scary? FUCK. I THOUGHT THIS WAS A ROM-COM."
Victims and survivors of sexual assault often turn to saying "it's not that bad" to either 1) encourage people to push back and say "actually, no, that's kinda fucked up", or 2) as their way of coping with it, because they don't want to think of themselves as someone who was assaulted, or think of the assaulter as... well, an assaulter. We, as a species, generally want to assume the best of other members of our species, and are willing to secure those rose-tinted glasses with gorilla glue if we have to.
I was stuck in that sinking ship for years. Throughout my high school years, I had a friend with benefits that I regularly had consensual encounters with. But at least half, if not more, of those encounters only became "consensual" because he would pressure and harass me for hours, days at a time until I finally gave in, not because I wanted to have sex, but because I wanted him to leave me alone and was scared of what he would do if I didn't. I may have been all but forced to agree, but I did not consent. Convincing myself that these encounters were consensual let me brush off the times where he actively blew through my no's, my physically pushing away, much easier. Instances of actual, active sexual assault became easier to just toss into the mix of instances where I didn't want it, but just stopped fighting. As the anonymous blogger did, I locked all of these in the box that contained my files of "meh" sexual encounters and left it at that for many, many years.
Continuing to tell people that their experiences are "not that bad" sets a dangerous precedent for continually upping the ante for what's allowed to count.
Oh, they ignored your verbal and nonverbal cues that you weren't into it? At least they didn't leave bruises.
You had to physically struggle against them and have bruises? At least they didn't kill you.
They killed you? At least it was quick and dirty, and not a super drawn-out and painful death.
They physically, mentally, and sexually tortured you for days before slowly murdering you in cold blood, burning the evidence and leaving the country? Oh, fine, ya got me there.
This may seem like an exaggeration, but it's something that a lot of people hear every day. It's something that a lot of people internalize every day. With that internalization comes the idea that what happened to you, personally, will never be enough to "count".
Part of that is not wanting to see yourself as a victim, or have other people see you as a victim.
Part of that is knowing that no matter how bad you had it, you will likely never receive validation from the Executive Board of the VIP Victim's Club™, or its supporters (which, at the moment, happens to be the vast majority of society).
Consent can be very subjective, and each person might show their "yes" and "no" differently. But we should be educating people that generally, if someone is not participating in the act, is trying to move away from you, is verbally telling you that they want to relax, that we should take this moment to talk about what they do want to do. Use it as an opportunity to set ground rules for the encounter and figure out what each person really wants, rather than assuming that if you keep going, they'll warm up to it eventually.
For Ansari, this is a blip on his radar. His ratings and views might go down a little, but in approximately two months, he can sweep this under the rug and pretend it never happened.
For Grace, this is something that will stick with her. The experience in and of itself will stay as a reminder that maybe it's easier to just give in to a violation of your body, than have to fight it constantly. The backlash she's gotten will remind her that people won't stick up for her if she does try to fight it. It's a losing game anyway.
These are the lessons that get ingrained in our brains when encounters like this happen. Let's get our shit together so that half the world's population (or more) isn't subconsciously or consciously traumatized, yeah?
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