CAN #METOO DO HARM?
Ansari story raises questions about murkiness of sexual territory
Legions of women have embraced the #MeToo movement as a vital step toward countering widespread sexual abuse and misconduct. Now, there’s visceral discussion about its potential for causing harm.
The catalyst was the publication by Babe.net of an account by a woman identified only as “Grace” detailing her 2017 encounter with comedian Aziz Ansari. The article intimated that Ansari deserved inclusion in the ranks of abusive perpetrators, yet many readers — women and men — concluded the encounter amounted to an all-toocommon instance of bad sex during a date gone awry.
Ansari has said he apologized immediately after the woman told him about her discomfort during an encounter he believed to be consensual.
Online and in person, many women are talking about experiences comparable to Grace’s account — encounters with men who initially seemed wonderful, but turned pushy, if not criminally abusive, when things became sexual.
Sarah Hosseini, who writes about sex for Bustle, Romper, Scary Mommy and Ravishly, said the #MeToo movement might actually benefit from the Grace/ Ansari controversy.
“There is some really murky and confusing sexual territory here that we haven’t really talked about yet collectively as a society,” she wrote, adding that the woman’s account in Babe was “disgusting and cringeworthy.”
“What she experienced with Ansari is not OK. But do we have language yet for intimate encounters that teeter on the edge of absolute sexual assault/abuse?” she wondered.
“I don’t think we do. We’ve lived in a misogynistic world with misogynistic sex for so long. We thought this “bad sex” was normal. Until someone spoke up and said, this is NOT normal. This is not OK.”
Michael Cunningham, a psychology professor at the University of Louisville, said the Grace/Ansari encounter reflected misunderstandings that may arise due to differences between conventional dating relationships and hookups.
“It appears that Grace wanted Ansari to treat her as a potential girlfriend to be courted over multiple dates, rather than a pickup from a party engaging in a mutually acceptable transaction,” Cunningham wrote in an email. “When he did not rise to her expectations, she converted her understandable disappointment into a false #MeToo.”
Liz Wolfe, managing editor of Young Voices, a D.C.-based organization that distributes op-eds by millennials, said the Ansari story gets at the core of what we are taught regarding dating, sex and romance. Men should pursue, women should play hard to get.
“So many women have wondered in a situation, ‘Have I said “no” decisively enough?’” Wolfe said. “They can’t quite figure out whether they want to go forward or leave ... And from the male perspective, he can’t quite figure out what the woman wants.”
Wolfe has noticed a generational divide in their reactions. Older women tend to think Grace should have been more vocal and assertive, or simply left Ansari’s apartment.
Younger women feel that Ansari should have read Grace’s body language and listened to her more closely, and he was at fault for pressuring her.
Among men, likewise, there are varying views.
Tahir Duckett of ReThink, a non-profit seeking to deter boys and young men from committing sexual assault, says, “This moment absolutely calls for a changed approach to dating and courtship ... It means paying just as much attention to body language as we do to words, and stopping to check in if at any time you’re anything less than 100 per cent certain the other participant is as enthusiastic as you about what’s going on.”
Warren Farrell, an early member of the National Organization for Women and the author of Why Men Are the Way They Are (Berkley, 2002) and The Boy Crisis (Benbella Books, 2018), suggested women should bear more of the responsibility for initiating sexual interest. And he recommended training in schools for each gender to view relationship issues from the other’s perspective.
“When #MeToo focuses only on women complaining and not both sexes hearing each other, it reinforces the feeling of women as fragile snowflakes rather than empowered to speak and empowered to listen,” Farrell said.