The Internet is Picking Sides in Aziz Ansari’s Misconduct Debate

The conversation is also inspiring soul-searching among advocates for and critics of the Time’s Up and #MeToo movement, with many wondering where to draw the line between questionable and bad behavior in the bedroom.

• The controversy was sparked by an article in Babe in which a 23-year-old accuser referred to as “Grace” described a date in which she alleged he pressured her to give him oral sex, an experience that she says left her “distressed.”
• Ansari responded after the publication of the story in a statement, saying: “The next day, I got a text from her saying that although ‘it may have seemed okay,’ upon further reflection, she felt uncomfortable. It was true that everything did seem okay to me, so when I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned.”
• Since then, dozens of think pieces have been published on the subject. In the Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan opined that he was being professionally “assassinated” by his accuser and Babe.
• “The clinical detail in which the story is told is intended not to validate her account as much as it is to hurt and humiliate Ansari,” she wrote. “Together, the two women may have destroyed Ansari’s career, which is now the punishment for every kind of male sexual misconduct, from the grotesque to the disappointing.”
• In the New York Times, Bari Weiss wrote an op-ed summarized by the headline “Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader.”
• Others, including HLN host Ashleigh Banfield concurred. She read an open letter to Grace on the air.
• “You have chiseled away at a movement that I, along with all of my sisters in the workplace, have been dreaming of for decades,” Banfield said. “A movement that has finally changed an oversexed professional environment that I, too, have struggled through at times over the last 30 years in broadcasting.”
• But others, including feminist author Jessica Valenti, think it’s an important story to tell, tweeting: “A lot of men will read that post about Aziz Ansari and see an everyday, reasonable sexual interaction. But part of what women are saying right now is that what the culture considers ‘normal’ sexual encounters are not working for us, and oftentimes harmful.”
• Los Angeles Times op-ed scribe Jamil Smith concurred, tweeting: “I was finally able to read the account of the date with @azizansari. From the described events, he appears to have no understanding whatsoever of sexual consent. Nor do his defenders, it seems. It is appalling to see some shift attention away from his coercive and violative acts.”
• Whatever your opinion, you’re sure to find an op-ed writer who agrees-and disagrees-with you.