The Provocateur: ‘Aziz Ansari’s behaviour was not sexual assault, it was just bad sex’

Last week, an anonymous account of a date with Aziz Ansari made headlines, divided opinion, and left his career hanging in the balance. Writer Jane Mulkerrins gives her provocative take…

ever woken up in an unfamiliar bed, jittery with revulsion and self-loathing, wishing you could delete the previous 12 hours? Me too. Ever been back at a guy’s place, dress half off, but rapidly going off the whole idea, and then… well, just gritted your teeth and gone through with it anyway? Yeah, also me too. We’ve (mostly) all been there. And there are some gnarly, negative emotions that often follow a night that went awry: regret, anger, humiliation, shame. But characterising a consensual act (albeit a joyless, unsatisfying one) as abuse or assault, is not only a serious misappropriation of the #Metoo mantle, but completely contrary to its aims.

Last week, an anonymous 23-year-old photographer, named ‘Grace’ for the purposes of the piece, told her story to the online magazine Babe: ‘I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life’.

In précis: Grace met the 34-year-old actor and comedian, creator of Master Of None, at a Hollywood party. When they both got back to New York, they arranged a date. She went over to his apartment on a warm September night; they drank wine, then strolled to a nearby oyster bar onboard a boat.

Back at his apartment, after what she describes as a hurried meal, the tale turns sour. Grace complimented his marble worktops – ‘Ansari turned the compliment into an invitation’, the piece reports. ‘He said something along the lines of, “How about you hop up and take a seat?”’ Grace recalls. They started kissing, then he ‘ briefly performed oral sex on her, and asked her to do the same thing to him’.

Grace, the piece reports, remembered ‘feeling uncomfortable at how quickly things escalated’. ‘ When he told her he was going to get a condom, she voiced her hesitation explicitly. “I said something like, ‘ Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill.’”’

The situation continued, both in a state of undress, with Ansari apparently continually attempting to persuade Grace to have sex, and her, in turn, repeatedly moving away. She recounts how he repeatedly put his two fingers in a V-shape down her throat and then tried to finger her. ‘But the main thing was,’ the piece reports, ‘he wouldn’t let her move away from him.’ So why did she stay? If you don’t like a situation, you can make your feelings clear; you can stand up, get dressed, and leave. Eventually, Ansari called her a cab. She says she got teary afterwards and felt violated. Now – having grappled with the aftermath of the night – she believes it to be sexual assault.

It goes without saying that none of us were witness to the events that night. We only have Grace’s version, and, now, Ansari’s response, in which he says their sexual activity ‘ by all indications was completely consensual’. He contacted her the next day, to say it had been fun meeting her. When she responded that it hadn’t been that way for her, he was ‘surprised and concerned’, he says, and replied, ‘Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.’

To me, this encounter bears no relationship to the #Metoo movement, to which Grace’s story seeks to hitch its wagon. Ansari is not Grace’s boss, colleague, or someone with influence over her career. He is, as the piece details, ‘a successful comedian and major celebrity, and she [Grace] was “excited” for their date.’ Ansari has no power over her, other than that which we ourselves ordain celebrities, often expecting them to behave as superior examples of humanity. We don’t know for sure if Grace felt that way towards him, but did Ansari behave as a superior specimen? No. As the report states, ‘Grace compares Ansari’s sexual mannerisms to those of a horny, rough, entitled 18-year-old.’

But a woman is, voluntarily, in his home, and has just allowed him to give her oral

sex. The possibility that penetrative sex might shortly be on the cards too is not such a fantastical idea.

I am not saying that any woman who engages in oral sex is automatically signing up for penetrative sex too, but there exists the possibility that things might unfold that way. Just as there exists the possibility that she can say no, and expect to be listened to. And, Grace’s account does note that when she said, ‘I don’t think I’m ready to do this,’ Ansari suggested they put their clothes back on.

This is a bigger issue than one woman besmirching the name of a famous man after an undesirable encounter. This is about the level of responsibility that we, as women, all need to assume for our actions.

‘Most of my discomfort was expressed in me pulling away and mumbling,’ says Grace. She did, eventually, tell him, ‘I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you.’

In my opinion, we need to learn to speak up, clearly – in celebrity’s marble kitchens, or unfamiliar bedrooms, as well as in the workplace – without worrying whether men will like us less for it. We need to learn to be bold enough to explicitly say ‘ Yes’, ‘No’, ‘I like that’, ‘I don’t like this’, or, failing that: ‘Goodbye, I’m going home now’.

Of course, our culture has long cast men in the role of the sexual conqueror, with women as the coy, gently resistant, but ultimately compliant conquest – archetypes that serve neither side well. And centuries of power imbalances means that intimate interactions are often rife with internalised, highly gendered behaviours and expectations.

So speaking up, explicitly, doesn’t always come easily. But surely part of empowering ourselves means drawing our own boundaries and communicating our own needs? Being able to say, to someone, at an intimate, and potentially awkward moment: ‘ You want this to be fun for everyone involved, right? Yes? Me too.’