Two years ago I wrote “Equal Rights Amendment, Bristol Palin, and Aziz Ansari” and now Mr. Ansari is back in the news.
This Independent article opens with
Aziz Ansari, comedian, creator of one of the most socially progressive shows of our time and an ardent feminist campaigner has been accused of taking sexual advantage of a woman.
What makes this guy’s show “progressive”? And, if he is espousing the discredited “equality feminism” of the 1960s, how is he “an ardent feminist campaigner” by the standards of 2018?
[Separately, will the older thought criminals who wondered why fit young women couldn’t outrun the morbidly obese 65-year-old Harvey Weinstein now ask why a 23-year-old couldn’t get away from a slightly built attacker 5’6″ in height?]
Conflating what Aziz Ansari allegedly did with what Harvey Weinstein allegedly did is not helpful for anyone’s understanding of this issue.
“wondered why fit young women couldn’t outrun the morbidly obese 65-year-old Harvey Weinstein”
When it comes to violence, tactics are often more important than raw physical power, and “morbidly obese” Harvey Weinstein was probably substantially stronger than may of the women he allegedly attacked anyway. Even the strongest, best trained, and best armed soldiers in the world are sometimes killed in ambushes.
Went to college with him. He had sex with plenty of girls then. All it takes is one or two of them to change their mind and join the me too movement. I didn’t remember him as liberal or progressive at all. In fact he was in the business school, not the art school!
It seems that Neal was in the bedroom closet when both Harvey and Mr. Ansari were pursuing their respective passions (so now he can judge them against each other!). And I appreciate toucan sam’s college nostalgia.
But nobody has answered the question: what makes this guy especially “progressive” or “feminist” compared to the average worker in Hollywood?
From the supposedly scandalous story:
We spoke to Grace last week. When we met, Ansari had just won Best Actor for his Netflix show “Master Of None” at the Golden Globes, where he declared his support for the fight against sexual assault and harassment by wearing a “Time’s Up” pin on the red carpet.
https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355
Grace says she twice put his penis in her mouth, but also complained the next day:
“You ignored clear non-verbal cues; you kept going with advances.”
Aziz did an anti-trump monologue on SNL, and since Trump is regressive and a misogynist, that makes Aziz progressive and a feminist. Hollywood logic!
“It seems that Neal was in the bedroom closet when both Harvey and Mr. Ansari were pursuing their respective passions (so now he can judge them against each other!)”
I said it was not helpful to conflate the allegations against them. I did not need to be in the bedroom closet to read and compare those allegations.
A premise of MeTooism is that all female allegations are equivalent. The MeToo folks get very offended if you suggest that some allegations are more serious than others.
A bit OT, but lately Phil is creating posts with a trail of most amusing debate afterwards. I especially commend Neal for being Phil’ straight man. In fact I think there is a veritable mine of both entertainment and information in Neal and Phil’s dialogue. May I suggest a podcast? It would be incredibly good.
Wonder what it means “to take sexual advantage of women.” Is it like taking sexual advantage of little children or the mentally defective? that they are deemed unable to form the mental state to consent because their consciousness is undeveloped?
Oh come on Phil there is no “Neal” — so stop pretending to argue with him. He is your alter ego, your straight man, your Bud Abbott, your Captain Joe Friday. He’s the guy Tony Clifton called “baldy” and poured drinks over.
Teaching moment for Aziz. Put it in an episode of “Master Of None””
The left likes to label themselves as things they are anything but. A simple answer to your question another question: “What makes The Rocketman’s DEMOCRATIC People’s Republic of Korea democratic?”
Neal, time for you to follow Matt Damon’s self-prescription and shut up and take a back seat. Empowering.
Look, the fingers in the throat (mouth?) thing is pretty weird, but was that really a story of sexual assault?
So bad sex is now sexual assault. Maybe women have been repressing this grievance for a while. Does this mean we can have a specific threshold then? Maybe the threshold is that she must have at least one orgasm for it not to be called sexual assault.
On the flip-side, maybe for most men bad sex is like bad pizza – it’s still kinda good.
There are still sane women in this world:
A comment by Dominika Juillet, on another blog (http://www.katykatikate.com/2018/01/not-that-bad_15.html?m=1)
“Am I the only woman in the room who has ZERO problems while living in the first world, understanding how google works, 911 operates, that if and when I am EVER in a situation where I don’t want to be.. I LEAVE?! Like literally what you call “normal” regretful sex.. NEVER has been the situation for me and here is why. I do not go home or take home people who I only had dinner with once.. (neither men nor women), I don’t engage in physical intimacy with ANYONE until I’ve known them for at least 3 months (no I’m not religious, it’s just something I viewed as “smart” when I wanted to be a secret agent). I’m in Hollywood, I’m an actress (I have met some of the very people named as sexually abusive and yet, because I refuse to go to ANYONE’S house, or invite them to mine, if I don’t know them), I have never found myself naked with someone’s penis that I don’t want to be with. I VERBALIZE my preferences to anyone who asks me about “dating” or makes verbal “moves” on me to let them know that “I don’t do one night stands”.. and I would argue that in 2018, ALL of us could take a step back and reconsider how we conduct our “courtship” as a species could use a little bit of refinement. Because for BOTH men and women, how can you expect PERFECT and UNDISTORTED communication about sex with each other’s bodies when you have only known someone for 6 hours and know virtually nothing about their MIND or their HISTORY??? Maybe one of the things that are endemic to these “bad dating situations” for BOTH sexes (but female ones are obviously more common) is NOT taking charge of how they play out because we accept and go along with the “first night F*&uing” expectation that has become the norm. This is a very animal way to interpret each other, like yes once upon a time (at least when I was very little) there was the concept of “waiting till marriage” to have sex… and of course that was all kinds of flawed too.. But I would suggest that the TOTAL OPPOSITE (fuck at random and early on in a relationship) might also be inherently destined to fail… because it is a very reductive thing to get physical with someone’s body before you have a cohesive and unforced sense of the mind behind that body. My two cents… I am saddened when I hear ME,TOO and I am upset that this Anziz story conflates the actual rapes with the “bad dates”.. that’s a dangerous and careless evaluation.”