Comedian Aziz Ansari wore a Time’s Up pin at the Golden Globe award where Oprah Winfrey gave a steering speech about the turbulent times when brute force is being used to subvert truth. After thisa little-known website published an unidentified woman’s vivid account of Ansari’s sexual advances while the two were on a date.
The story on Babe.net threw a wrench into the #MeToo movement, as people have been wondering whether the case is actually of just a date gone bad, and what this superfluous story does for more authentic cases of sexual harassment.
Ansari and Grace flirted for a week, went out for dinner, then to his flat where they had sexual activity. Grace has since said she was uncomfortable during the encounter and had sent non-verbal cues that Ansari ignored. Ansari has apologised, saying he went ahead because he thought it was consensual. There’s no reason to believe one over the other, but when Grace finally refused to continue, Ansari did call her a cab to go home. Ansari was rich, famous and older, but he had no power over Grace nor did he wield force.
Image Credit: the medium
Are all bad dates henceforth to be read as incidents of sexual harassment or assault? This is case of pure consent. Grace knew what she was in for, Ansari backed out as soon as he knew her discomfort.
Media ethics experts say it’s not easy to determine what constitutes a legitimate story of sexual misconduct in the midst of a social movement that has emboldened people to speak out on subjects once considered taboo.Some prominent women, including Whoopi Goldberg and Ashleigh Banfield, a host on the CNN spinoff HLN, concluded that the story didn’t describe sexual misconduct of any kind and lacked newsworthiness
This case raises the questions about the exact line of consent and how to differentiate such bad date experiences from real cases of sexual harassment at the hands of powerful men like Harvey Weinstein. By chalking up all awful evenings and uncomfortable encounters to #MeToo, even where there’s no intimidation or unequal power structure, we run the danger of diluting the campaign to name and shame the real predators out there.
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