You know all these accusations emerging about how famous (or not so famous) men are harassing and abusing and ignoring boundaries and being world-class jerkoffs? Some of you are not being dissuaded at all. I’m suspecting that you might be thinking that being an inconsiderate ass is kind of macho, or maybe you’re just oblivious to the idea that trampling all over a woman’s dignity is a bad thing. Welp, you ought to read this explicit,
detailed description of a bad date with Aziz Ansari. She spills the beans about everything. It’s very TMI.
But here’s the deal. Yes, this woman is explaining how Ansari ignored all of her requests to stop, from gentle hints to clear “NO”s, and awkward attempts to extricate herself from the ‘date’. But again, maybe you don’t care about her desires. But here’s what ought to stop you cold, even if you are a card-carrying member of the MRA/caveman/gorilla school of sexual encounters.
Grace reveals, in cringe-inducing detail, that Aziz Ansari is bad at sex. Clumsy, bumbling, childishly-demanding, needy, with weird quirky behaviors that no one wants to hear about. She doesn’t do it in a vindictive way, either: she’s just objectively reporting what Ansari tries to do on a hot date.
Your performance is being evaluated by outspoken women who won’t be shy about broadcasting everything to the whole wide world. Especially if you’re incapable of respecting them.
Heh, I see what you did there and I like it. There will have to be many avenues of approach to kill rape culture once and for all, and this one (appeal to the Atwood principle) is one that could gain some traction. Thanks.
Would these people even care that they’re bad at sex? If you have no respect for your partner and view them basically as a tool for you to get off, why would you care about whether they’re having a good time or not?
Re Dunc @2: The expectation is that they would care about their incompetence being broadcast. For some combination of ego and potential to reduce their chances for sex in the future. I don’t think PZ or anyone else thinks they’ll care that they’re bad at sex per se.
Dunc they might if that partner is prepared to say publicly they are inadequate. Though with some of these men that would be a very dangerous route to go down.
It’s the icky cootie-carriers who claim the magnificent misogynists and regal rapists are bad, and what do icky cootie-carriers know, huh, huh? And besides, the icky cootie-carriers are trying to scare off competing icky cootie-carriers, nudge nudge wink wink (sound of ringing cash registers).
Or in plainer English: The women won’t be believed and will be accused of having ulterior motives.
He may be bad at sex, but he’s very good at sexual assault.
Thing is, this exposes the shallow nature of current “time’s up” activism (and again why I’m deeply distrustful of guys calling themselves feminists): Ansari will not have been the only one to publicly support the campaign and privately abuse women.
Jesus, what a fucking creep.
blf @#5
Exactly my thought. The jerk will just say she’s lying. They do it all the time already.
Giliell, no doubt there are hypocrites who attach themselves to every progressive movement. That doesn’t mean the movement itself is shallow.
Apart from anything else through that story doesn’t reveal anything we didn’t know.
It only confirms Ansari was playing himself on Parks and Rec.
That was a creepy and disturbing as I would expected a “date” with Tom Haverford to have gone.
@blf
#5
Maybe men wouldn’t believe such women, but other women might.
I’m not sure why we choose, as a society, to stigmatise those who are bad at sex. But we do. We have this weird culture where somehow being bad at sex is seen as a deep and crippling personal failing. I think this is a rather harmful little bit of victimisation, to be honest, and one we could well do without. As someone who is completely awful at sex myself, it grates somewhat to be made fun of like this.
It seems particularly galling when being bad at sex is somehow associated or equated with being a rapist or sexual molester. They’re so far apart on the scale of moral opprobrium that you can’t even see the one from the other.
@cartomancer
#12
Except, in the case at hand, the guy who was bad at sex was also a molester.
cartomancer @12: Depends what is meant by “bad at sex”. I always thought “good at sex” largely meant being sensitive and responsive to what your partner likes or doesn’t like.
Whoa, this is the worst thing I’ve read since the Cosby revelations. And by that, I mean I’m utterly disgusted by this entitled vengeful woman trying to ride #MeToo by writing revenge porn.
First, she went on what she describes as a date, preceded by a week of what she describes as flirting, to have sex. It wasn’t a work meeting, it wasn’t a “come to my room, I’ll show you my butterfy collection” request rape apologists say is a request for sex, because, they say, women should know they’re otherwise worthless, it wasn’t a “nice guy” conveniently “mistaking” a woman’s friendship for sexual interest.
> Then he was undressing her, then he undressed himself.
And she didn’t object. She doesn’t say she resisted, or that she was too shocked to resist. She’d consented to some sexual activity and they were now getting naked.
> When Ansari told her he was going to grab a condom within minutes of their first kiss, Grace voiced her hesitation explicitly. “I said something like, ‘Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill.’” She says he then resumed kissing her, briefly performed oral sex on her, and asked her to do the same thing to him. She did, but not for long.
Okay, so he told her he’d like to have penetrative sex, she said “not right now”, they resumed having other types of sex.
> But the main thing was that he wouldn’t let her move away from him.
A dishonest, manipulative phrasing. They were naked, having sex around the apartment. He was following her, but not restraining her.
> she says she used verbal and non-verbal cues to indicate how uncomfortable and distressed she was.
‘Cues’ my ass. How about “No”, “Stop”, “I don’t want this”? Again, he’s not her boss or her superior, he wasn’t threatening, and he hasn’t done anything nasty to her to suggest he might respond to a verbal rejection with violence.
> “I know I was physically giving off cues that I wasn’t interested.”
Hahaha.
> She says she found the question tough to answer because she says she didn’t want to fuck him at all.
She’s an adult woman who went on a sex date, to have sex. She’s naked, conscious and they’re having sex. If she doesn’t want to have sex anymore, she needs to say no.
> But he kept asking, so I said, ‘Next time.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, you mean second date?’ and I go, ‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ and he goes, ‘Well, if I poured you another glass of wine now, would it count as our second date?’” He then poured her a glass and handed it to her.
So what did she say?
> “I said I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you,” she said.
Again, she doesn’t say “I don’t want to have penetrative sex with you”, she says she isn’t yet ready for it. What does he do? He backs off straight away and tries to make her comfortable.
> she thought he might rub her back, or play with her hair — something to calm her down.
Still very much down for physical contact.
> “He sat back and pointed to his penis and motioned for me to go down on him. And I did. I think I just felt really pressured.”
Oh noes! He suggests they instead have more of the sex they’ve already had and that she’s comfortable with, and she agrees and they do it!
> “He [made out] with me again and says, ‘Doesn’t look like you hate me.’”
THEY made out, and she acts as if she’s totally into him. Again, the wording here suggests he was pawing and slobbering all over the passive body of a shocked victim, but she just sucked him off.
> “After he bent me over is when I stood up and said no, I don’t think I’m ready to do this, I really don’t think I’m going to do this. And he said, ‘How about we just chill, but this time with our clothes on?’”
So when she actually says no for the first time, he instantly does the most appropriate thing – gets her and himself clothed (so that she can leave if she wants to) but makes it clear he’s still into her and ok with rejection.
> “I had to say no a lot. He wanted sex. He wanted to get me drunk and then fuck me.”
And yet again – dishonest, manipulative phrasing. She literally *had* to say no – but she didn’t. Getting someone drunk in the context of #MeToo implies he was trying to make her unconscious and then rape her – he wasn’t.
> “You ignored clear non-verbal cues; you kept going with advances.”
I guess sucking him off and making out with him wasn’t a clear non-verbal cue.
> And that’s why I confronted so many of my friends and listened to what they had to say, because I wanted validation that it was actually bad.
So, she realized he wasn’t really attracted to the *personality* of a 22-year-old celebrity chaser, felt humiliated and decided to whip up some written revenge porn to get some of that sweet, sweet emotional labor that’s meant to support real rape victims. She’s the MRAs’ caricature false accuser, in the flesh, and she’s beyond disgusting.
A rare mis-step I think here. If squinted at just right, and I get that it’s a reach, it might be seen that if ‘good at sex’ can be achieved then that being some sort of mitigation for the coercion and harassment and etc that comes before that one act. That sort of reach is just what the PUA/MRA crowd are so very, very very very, good at.
I wouldn’t attack the Aziz Ansari’s of the world in this way.
He acted badly and she should have said no and left. Simple as that. Apparently the first time she indicated a firm no was sometime after he had gagged her with his fingers and gave her oral sex. Then he stopped for a little while….why did she stay? After allowing things to go that far, do you think he’s interested in anything OTHER then sex? Seriously he was a complete douche, and the only thing that makes any sense on why she didn’t stop him and leave is she was still interested in pursuing some kind of relationship….after he already displayed what kind of douchbag he was. Sorry, don’t feel bad for her.
@ethereal
No. She does not write, “First, she went on what she describes as a date…to have sex.” She does not write that. You just assumed that, because that’s what you want to think.
Then, you write, “So, she realized he wasn’t really attracted to the *personality* of a 22-year-old celebrity chaser…” Again, that is what you think, that is your assumption. So, a date with a celebrity is automatically sex, and it could not possibly be for friendship. She should know that. For sure.
This is not revenge porn, you misunderstand the term. It’s not intended to arouse, sorry. This is a woman describing a very bad date, with someone who expects sex from women, because he’s famous. He is literally getting his rocks off on whoever is willing. She’s 22 and seen as willing. To quote her story, “Grace compares Ansari’s sexual mannerisms to those of a horny, rough, entitled 18-year-old. She said so to her friends via text after the date and said the same thing to me when we spoke.”
She wrote the story, because he wore the “Time’s Up” pin, because Ansari wants the world to believe he’s “the kind of guy who strikes out because he actually respects women.” He’s not. End of story.
The problem was pacing. His pace was fast. Her pace was slow. Bad mismatch. This was never going to end well.
billyjoe, #19
You nailed it. She’s 2 years old so she doesn’t know what she’s saying.
Yup. Pacing.
I’m sorry, I forgot to include content note before that post about what I was going to quote.
Yikes, not reading this thread anymore. Fuck you victim blaming assholes.
You know, if this keeps up we’ll end up with a world where nobody touches anyone in a sexual manner without asking permission!
Good. Welcome to my world, where people wouldn’t dream of touching another human being without asking permission, because THAT’S THE RIGHT FUCKING WAY TO ACT.
If a person just up and grabs me on a bad day, I’m apt to beat the fucker to death before I even know what’s going on. I’m not bragging about this; I’m saying that’s how I sometimes react to being handled rough without permission or warning, because people doing that kind of thing to me throughout most of my childhood has seriously fucked up my head.
I don’t do it every time. On a good day I’ll just peel their hand off of me and cringe away. On most bad days, I’ll jump away like I’ve been burned, put my back to a wall, and cry and yell a bit. But sometimes, if the stars are just exactly wrong, I’ll lose my goddamn mind completely and try to kill somebody. It’s only happened twice, thankfully, and I don’t even remember the actual attempted murder part- I actually had to ask the people who held me back what had happened.
I HATE that that is in me. It leaves me terrified of going outside, because what if it happened when there wasn’t anybody around to hold me back? I don’t want to hurt anybody, but…
…maybe we should treat everyone like they’re just like me. It ain’t difficult- ask before you touch someone, and respect the answer you get. If you don’t get a clear answer, don’t proceed as though you received an affirmative. If you never get a clear answer, then DON’T FUCKING TOUCH THE PERSON. Because A.) nothing gives you the right to do so and B.) they just might kill you for it. If “A” doesn’t give you reason enough not to assault someone, then you better believe that “B” is always a possibility.
The people in this thread defending Ansari, or minimizing what he did, should be ashamed of themselves.
Like cartomancer @12, I have serious issues with describing the encounter as “bad sex”.
Yes, being a rapist is one very significant way to be bad at sex. But even if something exists in the intersection of those two categories, there’s a big difference between describing it as “rape” and describing it as “bad sex”. Being “bad at sex” suggests that it’s an embarrassing condition for which you have no responsibility. This is something that rape apologists say a lot: “But what if I’m just socially awkward, how can I possibly navigate all these rules?” Rape apologists are willing to accept a little embarrassment in order to absolve themselves of responsibility.
In order to comment, I felt obligated to read the linked article, and I can’t say I really wanted to given that I don’t even know who Aziz Ansari is, and I don’t particularly want to read an graphically explicit depiction of rape. But I want to highlight this part:
Another way of putting it is that she herself was debating whether Aziz had sexually assaulted her, or was “bad at sex”. She decided on the former, and good for her.
Wow…. @ethereal, everything you said is whack as fuck.
Vucodiak,
“Welcome to my world, where people wouldn’t dream of touching another human being without asking permission”
You have a background of bad experiences that makes you especially vulnerable to being touched. That is understandable. But I think most people couldn’t stand to live in a world where no one touches anyone anymore. If you have to ask before you spontaneous feel a need to hug someone, the moment can be lost.
Anecdote:
A female acquaintance of mine told me recently of an incident that happened to her about ten years ago. She was caught in a crowd in the city when a harmless remark by passer-by caused a bad memory from her distant past to suddenly surface. A stranger saw her distress bordering on panic and spontaneously put his arms around her. She remembers that kindness to this day.
What if he had had to ask?
I think we need to be very careful about what we wish for.
(Note: I’m not talking about the Aziz Ansari case here)
Although in #24 I was critical of PZ’s framing, I find several of the comments in this thread more appalling.
ethereal @15,
I mean, I can’t say I would have made the same choices in telling the story, but I think there’s obviously room in the world for at least some accounts of rape to be graphically explicit. Otherwise, your only conception of rape is based on the movies, and then you read a real account and you can’t even recognize it.
paxoll @17,
Before we talk about what she should have done, let’s try to think of it descriptively. She did not immediately say no and did not immediately leave. She did not even immediately categorize it as sexual assault. This is a really common response to sexual assault. And if it sounds strange to you, behold, you have learned something new about human nature. I feel like saying “she shouldn’t have done that” is a way to deflect the obvious lesson about human nature staring you right in the face.
@billyjoe, #26- He’s lucky that he didn’t cause her panic to become greater. Because if I was in a panicked state like that, anyone male-presenting would cause my panic to go through the roof and it’s 50/50 on whether I’d freeze up or attack him in perceived self-defense.
If that guy had asked if your friend wanted/needed a hug, she would have still been comforted and that guy would have been showing he understood that sometimes the cause of our panic is a guy.
I mean I get what some of you criticizing the article are saying. It started out consensual for sure, but it didn’t stay that way. And its that last part that is lost on some of you. I gotta think about it some more, but it does feel like assault to me.
And I’m utterly disgusted by your victim blaming, and by billyjoe’s sexual assault apologism@19. Jesus wept, you’d think these creeps would know by now that this isn’t a place where their spew is welcome.
@Billyjoel #26:
It’s actually pretty easy to hug with consent.
Open your arms in an embrace gesture, but don’t close the distance.
If the other comes closer, they are accepting the embrace.
If they don’t respond, ask “can I hug you?”.
Anything that’s not a yes or a coming closer to hug should be treated as a “no”.
It’s one of those few things that’s easier done than said.
In other news, Ansari accepted the victim’s account and seems to have more or less apologised.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/jan/15/aziz-ansari-responds-to-sexual-assault-allegation
F.O.
“In other news Ansari…more or less apologised”
He already did that the next day in a text message he sent her after she indicated she’d had a bad experience. Here is that text message:
“I’m so sad to hear this. All I can say is, it would never be my intention to make you or anyone feel the way you described. Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.”
According to the article in the Guardian, this is the comment he made on Sunday night:
“In September of last year, I met a woman at a party. We exchanged numbers. We texted back and forth and eventually went on a date. We went out to dinner and afterwards we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual
The next day, I got a text from her saying that although ‘it may have seemed OK’, upon further reflection, she felt uncomfortable. It was true that everything did seem OK to me, so when I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned. I took her words to heart and responded privately after taking the time to process what she had said.”
So he was very clear…”we ended up engaging in sexual activity which, by all indications was completely consensual”…”it is true that everything did seem okay to me”…and he responded privately with that text message I quoted above.
Make of all that what you will.
KG,
“And I’m utterly disgusted by your victim blaming, and by billyjoe’s sexual assault apologism”
Thanks for the mischaracterisation.
From the article in the Guardian:
“She told the website she was uncomfortable with how quickly the sexual activity escalated”
It sounds like she is saying the same thing as I was saying in the post you referenced. I think we need to be careful not to rush to judgement.
Oh no, a male celebrity, do not rush to judgment!
Fuck that shit.
@BillyJoe
Do you think the same level of consent was present throughout the entire night?
Clocks have a “pace”. Humans have eyes and ears, and react to what they see and hear. We aren’t ballistic.
rietpluim, #34
But his reputation! It’s so unfair to ruin someone’s reputation based on their deliberate actions!
@billyjoe
You apparently need reminding that consent can be revoked at any time, including in the middle of full-on piv.
Also, many of us are quite happy thinking about a world in which people seek consent before touching. That you find that scenario intolerable says a lot about you, however. I can pretty much guarantee you no woman anywhere is going to be sad if you deny them your unasked-for pawing.
@Siggy I feel like saying “she shouldn’t have done that” is a way to deflect the obvious lesson about human nature staring you right in the face.
What lesson are you referring to and what should be learned? It kind of reminds me of line of logic that leads to the conclusion that you can not do anything sexual with another person without specifically asking. Meaning, you have to ask to kiss them, ask if you can use tongue in the kiss, ask if you can put your hands on their back, ect…oh and don’t forget this is going both ways. If the girl is kissing the boy and then starts to undress him that is assault unless she asked. It is an obviously ridiculous premise. The other more rational solution is that people say no if the other person starts doing something they don’t want to do. She starts to pull his shirt off, he says no. He starts to kiss her (cant say no very easily) don’t kiss back, push the person away and then say no. Its much easier to identify assault if you clearly state what you do not want the person to do. If you have to have to make that communication multiple times with someone in the same encounter, then the old adage about insanity (doing the same thing and expecting a different response) comes to mind.
Some people here should be legally required to print their comments here and hand them to any woman who might end up alone in a room with them. I know I wouldn’t want to.
She should have, she should have, she should have.
Never a “he should have”. Never any considerations that a) you don’t have too many options when you’re naked and b) escalating violence is a thing. Women know that saying flat out “no” is a dangerous thing, though her communication was very clear, saying she didn’t want to have sex and that he was making her uncomfortable with the things he’s doing.
As for his “apology” and the text message? Covering your defence 101. Seriously, it’s something date rapists and PUAs trade as tips amongst each other: Be nice, say sorry, but insist it was consensual, maybe somebody misread clues?
You want a story about misreading clues? I got one for you. It even has a happy end.
About 20 years ago, I was at a New Year’s Eve party. I ended up talking to a guy who was fun, nice, smart. We talked for a long time and then he tried to stick his tongue down my throat.
He noticed that I wasn’t mutual, he stopped and I asked him what the fuck he was doing. He apologised, he thought that I had been feeling about this like him.
I was completely shocked, because while I thought I was interested in getting to know him, I wasn’t used to guys having that kind of interest in me.
Again, he apologised and then gave me some fucking space. Indeed he gave me so much space that I thought he wasn’t interested in me when sober, but he stuck around. We kept meeting at parties, festivals and in pubs, got together 11 months later and have been married for more than 10 years now.
He still wouldn’t do any of the things Ansari did to a woman he barely knew without asking.
@paxoll. You’re being thick. My 15 year-old daughter discusses this stuff with me. Her view – the rules are simple. Ask permission to touch. If someone wants to stop, stop. Signals are important. If asked to stop, or your actions are deflected, don’t persist. Stop. She would find your parsing obtuse.
@Gnokgnoh the woman in the article was being obtuse. Because according to her account, they had already kissed, he had gagged her with his fingers and he had performed oral sex on her before she “asked to stop, or your actions are deflected”. Criminals, and just plain sleezebags have one thing in common. Telling them not to do something is about as useful as telling your dog to solve dark matter. A criminal is not going to stop committing a crime they want to do because someone tells them not to do it. A sleezebag is not going to stop trying to have sex with someone they believe they have a chance to have sex with. That means that if you want things to change, you have to initiate the change. “Signals” are NOT important because they are not clear. If she had BIT his fingers when he crammed them in her mouth, that “Signals” that either she doesn’t want fingers in her mouth, OR it means she likes violent kink. Give that “Signal” to a sleezebag who really wants to have sex, and they are going to at least claim to interpret it the way it leads to having sex. So, if you say you “don’t think you are ready” for sex and then STAY you are “Signaling” that maybe you’ll be ready for sex after another hour of foreplay. Your 15 year old sounds smarter then the woman in this article.
@Giliell #40:
After reading the stomach-churning self-indulgent ignorant crap which has emerged on this thread, it’s such a relief to read a heart-warming story as yours and your husbands. Thank you.
#26: @billyjoe said:
That right there is mischaracterization and a slippery slope. You are saying that vucodlak @23 is “especially vulnerable to being touched” when what was actually said was:
See the difference? Vucodlak said “…without asking permission” which you mischaracterized as “a world where no one touches anymore” and did so in a way that implied people being obliged to seek permission for contact will inevitably lead to a world without contact (the slippery slope) Those things are not the same. You must necessarily then also object to vucodlak’s assertion that seeking permission for contact is the right way to act. Care to defend that position?
I’ll include an anecdote too, since that seems to be a thing with you: I have offered people bodily contact and not received assent. I offered a woman a handshake, and she waved hello in response. She knew what I was offering, didn’t want it, offered a non-contact response in return, so I adjusted and waved hello as well. We both got what was intended out of the interaction, which was a first meeting in a social situation.
I was not hurt by it. Why? Because IT’S HER FUCKING BODY, that’s why. I honestly do not get what is so difficult to understand about this concept.
Secondly, you said:
To which I’d like to ask: whose moment? You are assuming because you feel “the moment is right” to give someone a spontaneous hug, that other person probably/should/must feel the same way. You assume that because you’ll feel you’ve lost something when not getting to hug someone, the target of the hug must necessarily be also losing something, or should be swayed to accept the hug because of the possible negative effect on you of the “loss.” That’s fucking creepy. Do not project your desires onto others.
Funny thing is, when we actually do tell guys to get lost and manage to get away*, a rash of mansplainers descends on us telling us how mean we are.
*how can you tell if he’s just a sleazebag who will stop short of violent rape or a criminal who won’t? Oh, right, you can’t until it’s too late.
Rich Woods
You’re welcome. This story is why I know exactly what an honest mistake looks like.
@ billyjoe, #26
I’m glad your acquaintance found it comforting, but what if she hadn’t? This stranger had no clue what was going on, and I’m certainly not the only person who doesn’t like being touched by people who aren’t known/aren’t trusted. The action taken by the stranger could easily have made it worse.
All he had to do was say: “Are you ok? Can I do anything to help?” Just asking the question, and meaning it, is a kindness. Even “Would it be ok if I hugged you?” would be an improvement.
Just in general: it’s always been my policy to ask before touching someone, and it hasn’t “spoiled” anything. The “worst” that’s happened is that I’ve gotten a no. I’d rather live with that mild embarrassment and disappointment than assault someone. Hell, most of my admittedly small number of romantic partners have appreciated the fact that I ask.
It’s a strawman to suggest that every stage of every single interaction requires a verbal contract. I’m not very good at reading people, but even I can tell if someone is uncomfortable with something if we’re close enough to touch. If I can’t tell, I ask. If I’m going to do something I think might come as a surprise, I ask. This is not difficult.
@ paxoll, #42
Yes, but criminals are easy to avoid. Just look out for anyone in striped pajamas carrying a pillowcase with dollar signs drawn on it. *eyeroll*
Seriously, if Ansari wasn’t going to stop because she told him no, then what makes you think he would have let her leave? That she was already uncomfortable with the situation is obvious, and I don’t buy that he wasn’t aware of her discomfort just because she didn’t bite his fingers off.
Perhaps this anecdote will help you to understand why she didn’t do that, or simply run away-
[CONTENT NOTE: ATTEMPTED RAPE, GRIEVOUS BODILY HARM]
I’ve had a couple of female friends who would bite someone’s fingers, if they were uninvited. I know this because they were well familiar with, and comfortable using (when necessary), violence.
One friend (L) did just that to someone who attempted to assault her, partially degloving his middle finger. When he recoiled in pain, she stomped his insole, broke his nose, and then ran.
Most people aren’t prepared to do that kind of thing to another person, but L, like me, had grown up with violence. She was well-practiced in fighting, and prepared to use what she knew to defend herself. It isn’t as easy as some (most?) people think to harm another person like that. We’ve got all these ingrained safeguards in us that tend to make us hesitate, or pull our punches. It takes practice and experience to get to the point where you can deliberately maim another person without hesitation.
L fucked up her attacker, then ran like hell. If she had hesitated, or held back, or even tried to run, she would likely have been raped and seriously injured, possibly even killed. Her attacker was larger and stronger than her- she knew her one chance was to disable him and run. This guy wasn’t going to let her leave until he was finished with her, otherwise.
[End of content note]
Grace had no way to know whether Ansari would have let her leave, and, like most people, she probably wasn’t accustomed to using violence. She makes it pretty clear in her account that she didn’t him shoving his fingers into her, but she “let” him do it. The why of it is pretty clear from her account: she felt like she didn’t have a choice. Maybe he would have simply let her leave. Maybe he would have hurt her even more.
@Billyjoel
Do you think the same level of consent was consistent throughout that whole night?
@vucodlak/giliell So to avoid being violently raped instead of JUST raped you think its ok for a woman to simply go along with it? Holy shit that is completely fucked up. So first of he literally backs up exactly what I said in this…
“Whether Ansari didn’t notice Grace’s reticence or knowingly ignored it is impossible for her to say. “I know I was physically giving off cues that I wasn’t interested. I don’t think that was noticed at all, or if it was, it was ignored.”
Notice at this point she has NEVER told him no. THIS is what she DOES say “I said I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you,” she said. Seems like a “no”.
What happens? Vucodlak- “Grace had no way to know whether Ansari would have let her leave” Well apparently she DID know because…
“she was happy with how he reacted. “He said, ‘Oh, of course, it’s only fun if we’re both having fun.’ The response was technically very sweet and acknowledging the fact that I was very uncomfortable. Verbally, in that moment, he acknowledged that I needed to take it slow. Then he said, ‘Let’s just chill over here on the couch.’”
Pretty amazing what happens when you unambiguously state how you feel about what is happening. Chances are this sleezeball wouldn’t have escalated into a full blown criminal, but he is also not likely to stop being a sleezeball. Meaning he will do this to many other women who think “signals” are going to get sleezeballs to stop sexually assaulting them. The only person who can stop you from being the victim of a crime is yourself.
@paxoll. You are victim-blaming, saying she did not do enough.
@paxoll #48
This is a stupid comment. The criminal obviously can stop the crime from happening.
@paxoll,
A major problem with telling people what to do in order to avoid being a victim, is that in many cases, victims do not see themselves as victims while the incident is occurring. That was certainly the case here, where Grace did not recognize it as sexual assault until after the entire encounter was over. The hard part isn’t knowing what to do in case of sexual assault, the hard part is recognizing that it’s sexual assault in the first place.
You can ask, how hard can it be? The answer is, it turns out pretty hard, especially when alcohol is involved and things move so fast. But also, even people who are perfectly sober can read a detailed account of rape which is labeled as such, and still not see it for what it is. That’s your take-home lesson about human nature.
@ paxoll, #48
Not what I said, nor is that what Giliell said.
We said she had no way of knowing whether she would be allowed to leave, nor could she know what response physically rebuffing his assault might be met with.
The specific point of the anecdote I shared was that if you’re going to resist an attacker with violence, you have to commit to doing serious damage, which is not an easy thing to do. It’s up to each person whether they choose to fight or not, but whatever they choose it is not their fault that they are being assaulted.
You don’t have a clue how he might have reacted.
This is pure victim-blaming bullshit.
I’ll say this again- it is not easy to fight back effectively. It’s not easy because fighting effectively means wounding someone in a way they aren’t likely to EVER fully recover from, but you cannot allow yourself to think about that. If you do, you’ll hesitate, or you’ll hold back, and then things are likely to get worse. I learned that lesson the hard way.
Well, I guess everyone has their own conclusion and narrative regarding this incident. My conclusion is that, from what has come out publicly, the case is, at best, marginal.
The alleged perpetrator, showed concern for the alleged victim on a number of occasions, not only from his own account but from the account of the alleged victim as well. The alleged victim was unsure initially whether it was just bad sex or sexual assault, but after discussing this with friends, she decided it was sexual assault. This does not mean it wasn’t, but it does mean that, at best, it was marginal. Maybe she was mistaken initially when she thought it was bad sex. Maybe she was mistaken when she later decided it was sexual assault.
As a test of your own opinion about the case, what do you think should happen to the alleged perpetrator at this point? In my opinion, both the alleged perpetrator and the alleged victim should move on and take whatever lessons they can individually take out of the incident.
As for the touching question. I suppose we live in different worlds. Shaking hands is a matter of course in my neck of the woods, as is hugs and kisses. This asking every time you want to touch is just bizarre amongst my social group. It just doesn’t fit in with my world and neither do I ever want it to.
Hey billyjoe, thank you for outright saying that what YOU want is more important than what *I* want and that you’d rather I suffer a panic attack than have to spend about 3 seconds asking if a hug is okay. Shows just what a stellar person you are.
billyjoe
What is your ?
@paxoll #48
The only response i can muster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c
For real, this has to be one of the dumbest things i have read in this comment section ever.
You people need some serious help. Vucodlak reading comprehension, when he was sticking his fingers in her mouth he was not doing it to be violent and hurt her, biting his fingers would have gotten his fingers out of her mouth so she could tell him to stop (obviously she had plenty of opportunity to say stop and never really did). Saying the only thing that can stop you from being a victim is yourself is a statement of fact. No where was I saying a woman who doesn’t say no is to blame. I’ve been a victim of crimes on numerous occasions, and the ONLY thing I could do to avoid it was changing MY behavior that put me at risk. Telling someone whos house got broken into that “they should get a dog” is not victim blaming. Telling someone who was mugged that they shouldn’t use an ATM at night in an empty street, is not victim blaming. It’s telling them what they can do to NOT be a victim again.
Koshka what part of criminals are CRIMINALS do you not understand.
Siggy, it is not hard to know when you are being touched sexually when you don’t want to be. Even drunk to the point I can’t walk straight doesn’t make me suddenly not able to make decisions. Being drunk is not an excuse, not for the guy, and not for the girl. Yes there is a point where someone is so drunk they can’t move and talk and likely won’t remember what they did in the morning, that is a completely different condition then someone who had a couple glasses of wine and can recall everything that happened.
There is virtually no way for Ansari to give his own side of the story without further humiliating himself. The accuser is anonymous and even if she gave her actual name, she is a nobody (in the entertainment world). He, on the other hand, is a celebrity. What is he supposed to do? Explain how he interpreted her “cues” when they were both buck naked and performing various forms of sexual acts? How is he supposed to do that? How can he prove to us that he is in fact “good” in sex without further revealing humiliating and embarrassing details about his sexual preferences.
Yes, Ansari is more powerful than her accuser. Obviously, she was hoping for a deeper connection. Maybe she was hoping to become her girlfriend or more. Her disappointment is understandable and even something to sympathize with. But it does not mean she was assaulted.
There is an imbalance of power here. Ansari, as a celebrity, expects to be able to have basic sex in the way he wants it (which is not far from normal vanilla sex by her account. There is really no rough or truly kinky stuff). He probably expected the girl to suck it up and even be proud that she had a one-night stand with a celebrity. That is his crime. What a surprise! A celebrity expects a nobody to go along and suck it up! This is what respect means for him.
More than Ansari, this is the fault of the culture which portrays celebrities as this bigger-than-life role models who are special in every imaginable way. If this was any other man and this girl was really into him, maybe she wouldn’t have gone to a hotel with him on the first date. Maybe she would spend some time to know the guy and see if they were a good fit instead of hoping for love and connection in what the other party clearly construed as a sex date.
Wow, it got worse.
FYI
HTML lesson
Doing this
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
<b>bold</b>
bold
<i>italic</i>
italic
Using any of these will make your comments containing quotes from other commenters easier to understand. They will not help your comments make sense.
.
I needed to resort to gooogle to find who is . Still don’t really know.
or care
paxoll and raaak
Have you two considered getting a room?
paxoll @57,
Grace knew something wrong was happening, that she didn’t want to happen, but she didn’t conceptualize it as sexual assault. That’s what the story said. And I’ve heard lots of stories along those lines. I personally have a story along those lines. Look at it empirically, apparently it’s harder than you presuppose. You’re all like, “but I think it’s easy, therefore I’m going to ignore facts,” and what can I even say to that? Would it help if the facts came in data form rather than anecdote form? Look up some studies then. HJ was talking about a few earlier. I’m unsubscribing to this thread now, I have better things to do.
It often does just when you thought it couldn’t, doesn’t it?
This one has really brought the victim blamers and sexual assault apologists out in force! Thanks to ethereal, billyjoe, paxall and raaak (apologies if I missed anyone) for demonstrating once again that rape culture is thriving.
The way the story has been framed, the only way for him to defend himself is to go in detail into the sexual encounters in that night. Every single sentence will harm him more. Do you people expect him to hold a news conference and show how he uses his fingers during sex so the court of social media can judge if it is assault or not?
Being gross (in the other party’s view) is not assault and for the few actions that can be legitimately categorized as assault, no evidence is given. Besides the agency of the alleged victim is completely ignored when it suits the narrative. A question I would ask Grace would be: “What did you EXACTLY do when he put his fingers into your mouth after you dressed again and sat on the couch?”. Yes, I am aware she claims she was in shock or confused and was trying hard to reconcile his public image with what he saw privately. But for a person who remembers the Seinfield episode playing on TV, curiously nothing is reported about her own actions in that very crucial moment.
I am not saying she should have done something. I am not prescribing anything here.I am not judging her actions, but I am in a position to judge the reporting and merely point out that her actions in some crucial moments are not reported. It is as if she is not there at all. Right after that moment, her agency returns and she becomes assertive again and says no and other stuff and leaves. Since it is all conjecture, I would guess she made a noise or did something that could be legitimately construed as consent or even pleasure and led to him get the wrong idea about the situation. It is almost the same for the rest of the sex scenes. She describes his actions in excruciating detail without reporting what she was doing and then as if she snaps out of a dream, there is this occasional “No, I don’t want to do that”, here and there.
For the easily outraged, I repeat again: I am not judging her. She may have been victimized. I am judging the reporting and trying to figure out what can be extracted out of it! I truly find the reporting curious.
raaak Please read up on consent. It’s the only detail we’re interested in.
raaak:
The very nature of a defense is that it’s necessitated by an attack.
(Framing)
It’s important but not prurient, right? Otherwise, how would you know what to think?
Well, you really can’t without access to more details about “the sex scenes”.
To what reporting do you refer? This is a typically snarky opinion by PZ, who is hardly a journalist. He did link to the source, but that’s a personal account.
But hey, if what you find salient is not the event, but rather its reportage, perhaps researching it elsewhere would be more productive for you.
@paxoll
Are you sober? You are clearly not very good at this “reasoning” stuff. Because these both are very, very, very clearly victim blaming. Dog can be poisoned, drugged or shot during burglary – and that happens.People can be robbed in broad daylight in a crowded street – that happens too. You are confusing an action that reduces the probability of a certain crime (under certain specific circumstances) occuring for an action that stops that crime altogether. If everybody changes behavior to avoid current crime hot-spots, others will emerge. And no individual ever can have the foresight, the knowledge, the ability and the means to cover absolutely all bases, past, current and future ones.
I can guarantee you that for every instance where you point out “the victim of a crime x should have done y” it is possible to find an example of a person who did just that and still became a victim in my homecountry alone, and that one is smaller than New York alone population-vise.
I cannot decide whether you are vile or stupid or both.
Chigau,
My “neck of the woods” is the suburban fringe of Melbourne, Australia. Why?
I also didn’t how who Aziz Ansari was and had to google as well.
Rowan,
I’m sorry but I’ve never seen anyone having a panic attack as a result of someone giving them a hug. I guess it happens, but if you’re going to live your life on the basis of preventing every unlikely event, you’re going to have a pretty dull life. If I feel someone needs a hug to make them feel better I’m going to go ahead and give them a hug. If they happen to be one of those rare rare individuals – and I haven’t met one yet – who has a panic attack being hugged, I’ll deal with it depending on circumstances The person puling away before my arms get there might be a dead giveaway that there’s another issue going on here, who knows?
KG,
I’m part of the rape culture? Really? You’re going to pull that one on me? No one’s condoning rape here. We’re discussing whether this is a case of rape or bad sex. It could be one or the other. If it’s rape the alleged perpetrator has to be disingenuous at best. If it’s bad sex, the alleged victim has talked herself into believing that it was more than what she thought it was originally.
Reitpluim,
There was consent initially and then some ambiguity regarding consent, then some pulling back, then some more ambiguity regarding consent and finally a “no go” and a taxi being called. Read the account again. We can only go on the facts as we know them, everything else is speculation
Delurking to say three things.
1) ethereal and paxoll are being very inconsistent when they insist with one breath that what paxoll scarequotes as “signalling” is totally inadequate as a way to express lack of consent, yet failure to immediately knee the man in the groin and flee the room is good enough to show consent to any and all sexual activity. Nowhere in her account does she voice consent. Please google affirmative consent, apologists.
2) The eternal (apologist’s) question:
Then he stopped for a little while….why did she stay?
The short answer to this is that she stayed because he stopped when she asked him to. She trusted him. She gave him a second chance.
I think most humans are probably socialised to do this, and in the case of people we have already formed positive feelings about, the urge is even stronger. We don’t want to give up our respect for them. Additionally, for women, it’s seen as bitchy and unfair to judge a man by one bad action against us. And if we withhold judgement and associate with them further, and another infringement occurs, we have acquiesced to it according to the likes of paxoll and ethereal.
As we know, he quickly resumed his onslaught, which leads me to:
3) The things he did throughout the whole encounter are the things PUAs do. Only Ansari can say whether he read these techniques for overriding consent in a book, heard them from friends, or worked them out through trial and error on the bodies and psyches of the women he’s dated over the past couple of decades.
Whatever the case, he used the same approach as a PUA, and repeatedly declined to use the approach a person genuinely respectful of affirmative consent would use.
His shaming is a public service to every potential future partner of his, and if you apologists have behaved as he did, I hope yours follows swiftly.
Woke up this morning and read a couple of articles in my newsfeed from a female perspective. I’ll just leave these here:
The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari
Allegations against the comedian are proof that women are angry, temporarily powerful—and very, very dangerous.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/the-humiliation-of-aziz-ansari/550541/
Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/opinion/aziz-ansari-babe-sexual-harassment.html
The underlying inequality is being ignored by the victim blamers.
Aziz, maybe unaware of his power, but who’s society tells him he is a prize, he “won” and women want him probably pushes women and assumes he is doing it right.
A woman who’s society trained her to placate men and celebrity didn’t know how to stop it.
IMHO, debating this individual account will not resolve anything. Learning and working to lessen the inequality between the rich and everyone else will…. eventually. I hope.
Vivec, #59
Yeah, I didn’t think this place would have explicitly MRA style rape culture misogyny being tolerated. Sign of the times, I guess.
@Captain Kendrick
Actually Ansari repeatedly violated boundary violations and ignored negative reactions to his plans and actions. He should feel humiliated.
Would you care to back your shit up regarding your links?
Damn but the rape enablers in here make me want to vomit.
@Captain Kendrick
I mean seriously, mind reading? Get a fucking grip. People are being asked to respond to what others are communicating. It’s not random that parts of society are flipping things exactly backwards.
Lately I got caught shoplifting. And I was like “Hey, how was I supposed to know I had to pay the amounts of money on these little white tags? Nothing and nobody in the shop told me so! Do you expect me to read the shop owner’s mind for fucks sake?”
I’d previously relayed a this anecdote on this blog, but it was several years ago and I couldn’t locate it for copy/paste.
During college, there was a “destination” formal dance (dance at out-of-town resort + overnight stay) that both I and a female friend wanted to attend. Since neither of us were in a relationship, we chose to go together “as friends” and to split a room with another “as friends” couple. During the dance itself, both my date and I got pretty drunk. Largely influenced by the alcohol, I suspect, we “discovered” deeply held feelings for one another as we danced. Well before the formal dance concluded, she and I were reduced to an obnoxious couple just standing/swaying to the music while making out in middle of the dance floor. After enduring a few “Jeez! Get a room you two!” barbs from others, we both agreed to go back to the room for privacy.
We got there, and our make-out session quickly escalated to frenzied disrobing… we were soon both topless (underwear still on) and worked our way into bed. For a few minutes, we engaged in “anything/everything above the belt” territory. I soon felt the time was right to move forward (I sure as heck wanted to and it seemed to me that she did too). I moved my hand toward her waistline, and two things happened: she tensed up a bit and put her hand on mine to stop it.
My reaction to her reaction was, honestly, a bit panicked. Alarm bells were going off in my head: clearly I had misread something about her mood… but how far off was I? Was this the first “stop” signal of the night? Could I have missed others?.
“Are you okay?” was all I could get out. She responded, “Yeah, yeah… I just don’t want to go that far.”. I told her “Okay, got it.”. We resumed ourtopless make-out session for awhile longer, until we became wary about our roommates walking in on us. We changed into sleepwear, chatted for a bit, and turned in for the night.
No, this anecdote doesn’t end with, “And 10 years later we were married.” :-) It ends with: we both had a fun night.
I should note: when we chatted the next day, she did not thank me for exercising “valiant restraint” (or express wonderment at my acute “mindreading abilities”). Frankly, I would’ve been a tad offended if she had. “Valiant restraint” in that case amounted to, “not acting like a complete asshole and/or engaging in rapey behavior”. It is, after all, an insanely low bar. Unless you’re Aziz Ansari, I guess.
There’s so much else wrong in Ansari’s actions, but this is purely CASE-IN-POINT refutation of the “he’s not a mind-reader” defense:
Mind reading? Fucking mind reading is required here to figure out, “Does this girl want to put her hand on my penis?”? How mind-numbingly obtuse does it imply Aziz to be, to fail to recognize this behavior as, “this girl doesn’t want to put her hand on my penis.”? How stupid do you feel Aziz is, to suggest he’s incapable of following this realization with the mind-boggling mental leap of, “I should stop trying to put her hand on my penis.”?
yep billyjoe. Your desire to touch strange women is all important and pausing to consider that many of these women may have been stalked, assaulted and/or raped just takes all the fun and joy out of life.
See, my life is fine and fun. Here people don’t tend to just up and hug strangers and it’s also fairly easy for me to avoid being alone in a room with a guy I don’t know. Fancy that. But at least you are indeed open that you give no fucks about how the other person feels. Especially as many women in particular might be too afraid to say no once they are in your embrace and therefore already trapped. Because saying “please don’t do that” had absolutely never backfired and gotten someone killed….
And for those people saying “do this to not be a victim of rape”, you do realise that translates to “make them rape the other person”, right? Because a rapist will find a way to rape. The onus of rape is entirely on the rapist. The onus of theft is entirely on the thief.
@brony
>>>Would you care to back your shit up regarding your links?
Are you looking for an argument with me, or with the pieces I posted, both written by women?
I simply posted what I thought were two thoughtful articles, both written from a female perspective, that I happened to see (and completely read, not just knee-jerked to the headlines) this morning after chewing on this thread for the past couple of days.
Just curious here. The those guys justifying Aziz’s cluelessness/aggression, were you absent on the day they taught, “Your rights end at your nose?” I mean, really, what is so hard to understand about that? I mean, put yourself in an analogous situation: Say your buddy comes up to you with 50-yard-line seats at the Super Bowl. You go with him and he repeatedly tries to place your hand on his crotch. How do you feel?
What is really telling about the Ansari defenders is that they cannot agree on a version of what reall happened/the correct interpretation/ the power difference/ whatever.
But none of them argue with each other. Almost as if the really important thing was not some kind of truth but that Grace is the one to blame.
billyjoe
Fuck all did he do. He paid exactly as much lip service as he had to in order to put her off guard and have deniability. His actions speak way louder than his words.
A woman leaves a date crying, upset, shaken for days, but since we all know that women are too stupid to know anything, she probably was just mistaken about how she didn’t want the things that were done to her and actually really enjoyed them, as Ansari knew. Really, if women just stopped being all that b*tchy about their bodies and simply let the guys do what they want because the guys know this so much better than they, everything would be fine.
Do you want to know why women are careful to label the things that happen to them as sexual assault even though they are?
You and people like you, who constantly gaslight us and tell us that we’re wrong, that the things that happen to us are just not even bad or even good.
“But none of them argue with each other.”
Oh, you’re right. That is an interesting observation.
It’s like they have an unspoken understanding of the ‘sides’.
Oh, and btw, relevant as always: Mythcommunication: it’s not that they don’t understand, they just don’t like the answer
From the Department of Justice website (bolding mine):
The argument that she implicitly offered consent by not fighting back violently is not only victim blaming bullshit, its also irrelevant to the accusation of sexual assault by definition.
If she didn’t give explicit consent – and by this account, there are several times she explicitly witheld it – it was sexual assault.
Now fuck off and go whine on some MGTOW board anout how women destroyed yet another rapey celebrity.
@John Morales
I was referring to the article in babe magazine which is the source of this blog post. And here is what I find curious about it. It does not quite go all the way to portray the encounter as assault. If you read it, you will see that the highest crime Aziz is accused of is being clumsy, childish, and inept at sex. PZ has actually gotten it right as the title of this post shows.
I have read the comments here and many of the justifications for abuse are not in Grace’s account while they could have been. How hard it would be to simply claim she was afraid he would become aggressive if she outright refused him. But it is not there. You will not find the words “fear” or “worry” or “afraid” in that article. The whole account is about unrequited expectations and how she became disappointed and frustrated with his actions.
This is one excerpt used as justifications for assault:
See? She is not afraid. She is not worried for her safety. And this is AFTER she saw the encounter as sexual assault. She is just frustrated and bored! Put simply, this is not an account of outright abuse or inappropriate conduct. It is an account of unrequited expectations and frustration and intentionally so.
Yes, he was also responsible for not negotiating his moves beforehand. Apparently, he did not think it was out of the ordinary. But what is not reported here is how he understood the so-called “cues”! The cues she gave are not even reported! Did the writer ever stop to think about that?
And yes, what is described is a sex scene. Describing in detail what people do with their fingers during consensual sex is describing a sex scene. The story as it is, is not far from revenge porn. But it is on the writer and the magazine, not on Grace.
Content note: quotes from the article describing Grace’s experience
.
.
.
(bold emphasis mine)
It’s almost hard to believe these rape apologist scumbags are still arguing this.
Maybe they’ll listen to a dude?
raaak, #87
All of that is textbook rapist talk. You’ve probably already done it to someone or will. Fucking scary.
Whether or not she was afraid or worried for her safety is completely irrelevant to whether or not something is sexual assault or rape.
When I was assaulted, it wasn’t with a gun to my head – it was by a lover that wouldn’t take no for an answer and manipulated me through threats of suicide and emotional blackmail/conditioning into letting them do what they wanted with my body even when I voiced that I didn’t want to do things. I was never afraid for my life and I didn’t fight at all.
But hey whatever I didn’t stomp on their insole and I wasn’t in any physical danger so I guess it was just some bad sex – irrespective of coercion and ignored consent.
Fuck I really should just stay away from this thread.
Funny that Bari Weiss in her NYT piece noted the same thing I noted: the woman has no agency in the whole story. I guess it means Bari Weiss is also trying to perpetuate rape culture.
@Siggy, There is a lot you can’t really tease out from that data, ignoring “stranger” rape statistics only 23% of women considered what happened to them at the time “rape”. Is this because they didn’t know what rape was at the time? How many people believe that rape can’t happen between a husband and wife? The point is not whether a woman or man know they are being sexually assaulted or “raped”, but they KNOW whether or not they want to participate in the sexual activity. Which makes the other statistic in your link prove my point even more, that over 50% of the women considered “rape” (not just unwanted sexual contact, ie assault) to be from miscommunication. If you are having sexual intercourse that you don’t want because you can’t effectively communicate with the other person, then effective communication is a very big part of this problem.
@Charly Did I EVER say or imply that doing anything would stop all crime or even A crime? Considering I have repeatedly said and explained that telling criminals to not be criminals is pointless? “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result” which makes me apparently insane for trying to communicate with people like you. But this can also be applied to problems like “rape culture”, it means thinking not only critically about what happened, but actually doing something different. I think the best example is domestic violence/abuse. If you meet a couple, and after enough time recognize that one of the partners is physically abusing the other. Do you a) tell the abuser to stop abusing, or b) tell the victim to leave their partner? According to you, telling the victim to leave their partner is “victim blaming”. No it’s not.
Hindsight is 20/20. But observational bias makes it important for everyone to give account of an observed event and outsiders to give their 2 cents in order to fix a problem (its usually called therapy). Aziz looks like a complete sleezebag from this account. We don’t know his perspective. There is obviously a “problem” here to fix and telling Aziz to stop being a sleezebag is NOT HELPFUL, either a) he is a sleezeball and is not going to change, or b) it doesn’t give him any identification of what the problem is so he can fix it. So do we say to this young woman, “you are a victim, you did nothing wrong, keep doing what you are doing and hope the next guy is your prince charming.”? Is THAT your solution to this problem as it has been presented here? I also suppose you don’t take any precautions to avoid being the victim of crimes because – its the criminals fault, not yours and you shouldn’t have to change because of them? Don’t lock your car door or house? Don’t use any protective programs on your computer? Because doing anything otherwise is “victim blaming” yourself, and by implication everyone else.
@Captain Kendrick
No you posted more than that.
“The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari
Allegations against the comedian are proof that women are angry, temporarily powerful—and very, very dangerous.”
“Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader.”
Feel free to have more than link dropping and opinion any time, especially with the specific things people have already typed here that contrast with those opinions.
@Vivec Sorry for whatever happened to you. If you look back on what happened do you ever think that, I should have done x, or I will never do x again. Because that is bad, according to Charly here, any thought that you could of done something different, or do anything different the next time is simply victim blaming..yourself.
@raaak
Looks like you want to avoid the repeated boundary violations and ignored negative reactions towards what Ansari was doing and was planning to do too.
That is sexually predatory behavior.
@raaak
Her agency was repeatedly ignored. You and others keep ignoring that. It’s quite craven and fear soaked behavior.
Fuck off, don’t use my experiences as a way to snipe at other people you fuck
Hindsight is 20/20 but there’s no fucking way I could have done anything else with what I knew then because I’d been manipulated for years into thinking that it was right to let people use my body if it stopped them from committing suicide
Perhaps this retelling by Livia Scott will help put this story into perspective for certain people posting here:
@Brony, Social Justice Cenobite
Her agency is not even reported. So we do not know. The story goes into her mind in those moments and then there is these bursts of assertive action to which he responds more or less appropriately. Please read it!
They were chasing each other naked for about 30 minutes! She says she gave non verbal cues. Wouldn’t putting clothes back on be a very good non-verbal cue? Amazingly, this is what he suggests after she expresses a verbal cue. It gets even worse. For example, after they got dressed she says she was hoping he would caress her hair or rub her back to -wait for it- make it better! and posed herself in a way to facilitate that. I mean…come on!
Also, that many assault victims understand the magnitude of the abuse later on, does not in and itself proves that this was one of those cases. There is simply not enough evidence for that. And talking about what constructs a good and healthy sex is a legitimate discussion to have. Putting a #MeToo tag on this debate is not okay though.
The problem in my mind is not this story. I have witnessed firsthand how an abusive husband misused domestic violence laws and called the cops on his wife claiming she was being violent towards him. The cops believed the “victim” without much investigation. The woman paid hell for a long time while his abusive husband ridiculed her throughout the ordeal.
Trivializing sexual assault is a dangerous door to open because in no time the abusers will turn these new “rules” on their head to doubly terrorize their victims. The fact that so many people do not think this story is worthy of #MeToo is alarming. Admittedly, this is a hard problem. That is why automatically accusing everyone who voices a different opinion of perpetuating rape culture is not helpful at all.
Saad wrote:
Holy shit, some of you guys come across as bad caricatures of “alt-left” liberals (“If he disagrees with me, he’s a rapist.” Classic.) I try to avoid conspiracy theories, but I’m actually starting to believe some of you might be closet alt-right assholes trying to discredit the social justice movement from the inside. Hmm…
Paxoll: “@Vivec Sorry for whatever happened to you. If you look back on what happened do you ever think that, I should have done x, or I will never do x again. Because that is bad, according to Charly here, any thought that you could of done something different, or do anything different the next time is simply victim blaming..yourself.”
Ooh! Counterfactuals. Fun! I’ll play.
Paxoll, I’m sorry you are such a dull, imbecilic tool. Looking back, do you see where you maybe went wrong in your life–like where you stopped thinking of women as human beings that you might actually like to know and have as friends and started thinking of them as warm Japanese love pillows? I mean it’s probably too late for you to become a decent human now, but just in case there is such a thing as reincarnation, is there anything you’d do differently?
@Paxoll
It is not. It is the whole point of restorative justice and education.
If you read up on the problematics, you will realize that law enforcement does ideally a) by arresting, incarcerating or otherwise restraining and rehabilitating the perpetrator NOT b) by telling the woman to leave him and ignoring her. In addition to a) in ideal case and if needed, the society provides the woman with means to leave him, which she might not have on her own. At no point in functioning society do cops/judges just tell the woman to leave the man an leave it at that.
Further – it is false analogy, a fallacious argument pulled straight out of your ass. You are equating a scenario where a woman has prior experience with one specific individual with a scenario where said woman explicitly did not have that previous experiance with that one specific individual. How should she have known that he would assault her after everything started OK? Are you saying that all men are same and experience with one man can be 1to1 extrapolated to all other men?
If so then women would have to physically restrain all men from having any contact with them whatsoever in order to meet your absurd standards for preventing their own assaults. Because rape and assault happen in all imaginable contexts. Literally. There is no way a woman can “prevent” being raped. In one case she might not be raped if she did not go to that dark alley at midnight, but in other case she might not be raped if she did not go to a meeting with her boss at noon. In one case she might not get raped on a first date by a new acquintance had she not trusted him due to lack of previous experience, but in other case she might not get raped by a guy whom she trused based on previous experience.
The only variable that is common in all rapes and/or assaults is the presence of an assailant. Everything else can and does vary.
I know a guy, who recently retold an experience he had as a young man in the military in the 80’s. He hadn’t thought about it in a while.
As he told the story just last year with the new awareness of today, he realized that he was complicit in a rape.
My point is, some guys are going to have a hard time understanding what they have been doing. Coming to terms with it.
@raaak
Please read it? Okay. Done. You do the same. Done? Good. Now, let’s focus on a particular:
“Her agency is not even reported.” you say? Let’s consider Aziz’s reasoning, as interpreted through the framework “perhaps he was respecting her agency, but her lack of verbal communication left him with no way to know he was violating her agency.”
The blatant repeats are deliberate… really read through this narration, top-to-bottom, and *maybe* you can get some sense of just how asinine your claim “Her agency is not even reported. So we do not know. ” really sounds.
@Charly, Restorative justice and education is punishment FOR a crime. It doesn’t prevent crime. Tell people they are going to have to pay for what they stole, and have group therapy with their victims will prevent exactly 0 crimes. What prevents crime is convincing criminals that the punishments they receive are likely and worse then any benefits they get. For this specific topic, this type of publicity of the crime is both likely AND worse then any benefits they receive. While that may be true for anyone connected to celebrity culture, is it going to have any impact on average joe? Probably not.
As for the domestic abuse, a) police are not able to do anything without charges from the victim, which goes back to telling the victim what they should do. b) where the fuck did this “ignore her” come from? When was that EVER implied in what I said? Strawman much? Oh and please stick to gender neutral terms as men are victims of domestic abuse arguably as much as women. The analogy is perfectly fine, this woman had a experience with this individual, that experience stopped, and she continued to stay at his apartment just like a domestic abuse victim stays with their partner. Just because one happens over days, weeks, or years, or in this case hours, doesn’t change the underlying premise that the behavior of the perpetrator is inappropriate, the behavior stops, and the victim has the opportunity to leave.
So you are doubling down on this premise that I have indicated that not being a victim is completely within the power of someone, which I have never said, never implied and your constant implication that I have is getting intolerable, if you are not going to argue in an intellectually honest manner then do so without me.
@kevinkirkpatrick
The original story was ugly enough. Spare me your imagination and your porn transcript writing skills.
@raaak
You really can’t see places where Grace made choices? Choices to move? Choices to express that she did not want to do things? Choices to move their hand away?
Agency was reported are wilfully ignoring it. Funny how selective you are.
This is why I demand quotes from people who criticize accusers.
@hookflash
And yet your comment contains nothing of substance that indicates that I should care. You completely ignored the rapist talk they referred to.
Are you scared of the idea of rapist talk?
paxoll used Vivec and their personal experience as a political tool in another dispute.
That is dehumanizing behavior. No games. There are fights in here and that’s a good thing. That let’s us find the ways gossip becomes toxic social behavior.
paxoll you are a shitty human being and a coward to boot. Simultaneously shaming someone expressing something important and running from your other challenge. You are a good example of a person with the problem behavior that needs addressing.
The other side of gossip as useful social behavior is examples like whisper networks informing of socially abusive people. People with a history of sexual harassment and assault in positions of authority and power for example. In more broadly respected form you have whistle blowers.
@Brony, Social Justice Cenobite
Yes, she moved …naked! and allowed the same thing to be repeated a few times. Putting on clothes would have been a very strong non-verbal cue. She did not choose to do that because she wanted to play that game (this is what she says: it was repetitive. It was like a fucking game!) not because she felt that she was not in control.
We don’t know. But it is as likely that she wanted more intimacy in the next sexual contact. I am not blaming her for this. But I seriously doubt that this story qualifies for #MeToo. That’s all.
This looks like shit you learn about in couples counseling. Accept it. Find a way. Society fucked you up and now you need to collect data on how that way of fucking up works so you don’t do it again.
I am speaking from personal experience and I’ve got two impulsively related diagnoses. There are benefits to introspection for you here.
@ hookflash, #102
I can’t speak for anyone else here, but if you’re with the rape apologists and victim blamers in this thread, then you’re not my ally and you never were.
@ paxoll, #107
Restorative justice and education are not punishment. Punishment is worse than useless.
If that worked then no one would ever commit a crime, and the US sure as fuck wouldn’t have nearly 3 million of its citizens in prisons. Punishment does next-to-nothing to deter crime.
Being criticized by a relatively small minority of people, while many others fall all over themselves to excuse his actions, is worse than being sexually assaulted?
The worst really are brimming with passionate intensity lately.
@raaak,
* Should women have agency in choosing where to place (or not place) their hand?
* Did Aziz violate Grace’s agency in this regard?
@raaak
He moved Grace’s hand over and over!
We do know. You just choose to ignore it. He wore her down. Repeated negative social cues ignored. I don’t care about what you think they should have done. I care about what they did do in the accounts available to us.
So fucking what if she was naked?A blatant irrational use of nudity as bad a any religious prude. Congrats, you’ve found the general instinct. Now tame it and join the adults.
Brony, Social Justice Cenobite wrote:
vucodlak wrote:
How can you guys not see that you’re reinforcing my point!? The lack of self-awareness you guys routinely display is remarkable.
@hookflash
You are choosing not to quote what they are talking about. All you did was show that you feel negativity about it via political short-cut.
Coward. Quote what they meant by rapist talk. That people who rape talk is a fucking basic fact of reality. You are lazy at best.
You just assert it hookflash. You don’t actually show that anything is a problem. Why should I care?
Stop with the straw man. I never prescribed anything. I just said in a situation like this, one can roughly sort the clarity of non-verbal cues like this:
1- moving away or leaving
2- putting on clothes
…
10- mumbling
…
99- running around naked while harshly pushing the other party’s hand away
1000- running around naked while gently pushing the other party’s hand away
Also, what social clues are you talking about? Is being clothed and not receiving oral sex one of them? Why is it our job to figure out what those social clues were when we are forced to read the all Aziz’s sexual movements. She could have easily talked about them and it would not even be bad for her.
As Grace would say, this is becoming so repetitive and looks like a fucking game( with a moving target). We cannot confidently determine the level of consent in the context of what happened. We can only guess and we only have the one-sided and limited information Grace and the writer provide. This is hopeless. I am done.
@paxoll
Irrelevant to the thread, but this is wrong. Police can and will charge people based on the evidence they have. Victim’s testimony may or may not be one piece of the evidence. It is the prosecutor who can later decide about how to handle the case based on how the victim feels about the whole thing.
So, basically, we are telling rape victims to stop being raped?
Well, that’s one way to solve the problem…
She actually, verbally, said no. WTF is wrong with you people saying she didn’t give enough cues? Since when does being naked somehow explicitly indicate a desire for sex, while verbally saying, “no, I don’t think I’m ready to do this, I really don’t think I’m going to do this” does not explicitly indicate a desire not to have sex?
@raaak
Your hypotheticals are useless because you have yet to quote anything objectionable from Grace.
Literally. For all your feelings and concerns about hypotheticals it’s insult and gossip until you point to a problem. Grow some courage and quote what you say is a problem.
@ hookflash, #118
Saad’s suggestion at 90 that raaak may have engaged in abusive behavior is perfectly valid, because raaak has given us many examples of how raaak thinks, i.e. like an abuser. Saad’s comment isn’t an ad hominem as you seem to be implying. It’s a logical deduction, and a dead simple one at that.
As for me, I have never made a secret of where my allegiance lies. I lack the necessary mental capacity for complex subterfuge, and the patience for tired political games and deception. My point is that I will not tolerate sexual abusers or those who give them cover. If you’ve come here to stand with the likes of paxoll and raaak, then you are my enemy. You can whine about “shades of gray” all you want, but I am a simple creature, and that’s where I draw my line.
Wow, the reading comprehension much less the actual reasoning of the audience here is staggeringly stupid.
@Brony- Vivec brought their experience up on a public forum. The rational implication of that is they are willing to use their own experience to further the topics being discussed. I expressed my sympathies for what Vivec went through and then explained the logic of Charlys’ argument as it would apply in their experience. That is not dehumanizing, that is being inclusive and intellectually honest. If the reason Vivec brought up personal experience was supposed to be some kind of argument trump card of “you can’t dispute my opinion because I have personal experience” then I hate to say they were mistaken.
@Vucodlak Will try this html editing thing, I apologize if I do it wrong.
Lets see, do criminals do this before or after a crime? Are criminals forced to do this or is it voluntary? A forced action after an offense is pretty much a textbook definition of punishment.
This is a ridiculous conclusion. Do you know how many times someone shoplifts before being caught? Walmart loses 1 BILLION dollars a year to theft, how many people and items do you think it takes to do that? How many are caught? How many girls are raped or sexually assaulted a year at frat parties? How many of those guys are even charged with a crime, much less convicted? I don’t know if you are actually ignorant or purposefully obtuse. Lastly
this makes absolutely no logical sense. I’m talking about the criminal, in this case Aziz, and the likelihood of his transgression being caught or in this case publicized, which is very high because he is a celebrity. In the case of average Joe in accounting doing this and being outed is much smaller. In this case, how bad is this information being outed going to affect the individual. For Aziz that information will have a very large impact on his ability to work and be paid for his celebrity status. If average Joe was outed in this way would it have any affect on him. Probably very little. So this is a good deterrent to Aziz, it is not a good deterrent to average Joe. No clue what kind of bizarre reading comprehension made you compare his risk/benefits to HER experience.
@Vucodlak
Please show where I have EVER shown tolerance or cover to sexual abusers? You are so incapable of rational thought that you simply cover anyone who disagrees with you on any topic with every slander you can think of. Why not call me a nazi and get it out of your system.
Quoting myself at @5, “The women won’t be believed”.
When I predicted that, what I had in mind was some people (mostly men, as colinday@11 pointed out) simply would not believe the women’s claim. The rape fan comments in this thread are of that general type.
In addition, the “won’t believe” also applies to what is signaled to the jerk / rapist, verbally or otherwise, at the time of the incident. As one example, ! Yeah, sure, to understand “no” means “no” it is necessary to engage in something which does not exist. So while yer reading the upset women’s mind, also zoom away in a flying saucer to planet MRA and consult Guide to Avoiding “No” & Cooties.
Also, as robro@8 indicated, some people (mostly men again) will believe whatever the jerk / rapist said after-the-fact. The women won’t be believed.
At no time did I say “the women must be believed”; what I said was “the women won’t be believed”. Those two statements are not equivalent, despite the rape fans’s desperate attempts to muddle the distinction.
I guess only in the bowels of the Internet one can find this type of vile, pathetic personalities who accuse someone they do not even know of rape because they voiced a different opinion in 3 or 4 comments (which by the way, is not that far from what NYT and the Atlantic articles have voiced).
Talk about childish, abusive behavior.
raaak @121:
Ahem. We can be pretty sure that whatever was granted was exceeded:
“This is the text Grace* sent Aziz Ansari after their date which left her feeling “violated”. She tells Ansari how uncomfortable he made her feel, saying “you ignored clear non-verbal cues” and “kept going with advances.””, from the linked source.
(I see the pattern; you are sceptical about the testimony, so discount it)
—
re #130, are you seriously more piqued by the reaction than its basis?
(Your tit-for-tat insulting, if that’s how you really perceive things, is then ironic)
PS consent isn’t a binary all or nothing; it’s ongoing affirmation.
paxoll @127:
1. Aziz is neither a criminal nor has he been accused of being a criminal.
2. This is an irrelevance.
3. Whatever the effect may be is not of relevance to the truthfulness of the outing; also irrelevant.
4. You prognosticate without either justification or relevance.
5. This is an irrelevant restating of #2 (and you mistook ‘affect’ for ‘effect’).
6. The possibility of being made a horrible example is proportional to the possibility of being outed, the which correlates to fame. I do get you; I also note that the conditional of the outing being true doesn’t feature in your laboured exposition.
7. Perhaps consider your comparison of average Joe with the example at hand.
@John Morales
I do not have anything more to add the discussion. I have already said what I meant to say and there is no point in repeating. This is when we go our separate ways. However,
First of all, why do you even insert yourself into that? Wasn’t it clear that comment was not meant for you or others who have engaged in direct discussion?
And tit for tat? Are you serious? You find accusing people of actual rape (which is a high crime) a valid and logical conclusion in a comment section? For Pete’s sake, even the Ansari story is not about that. It came out of nowhere and was such a clear ad-hominem that I did not even respond to it until it was repeated by the other armchair psychologist here.
Of course it is vile and unethical and pathetic to use such a blatant and dirty ad-hominem clearly designed to silence the other party. If you cannot see that, if you think there is moral equivalency between baselessly accusing people of such high crimes and saying such accusations are immoral and vile, I fucking give up. There is no point in even trying anymore.
raaak:
You should have stopped there; the rest is just you defending yourself.
Relax. You’re being exposed to people’s opinion. But you’ve had your say.
@John, I never said he was a criminal or what he did was criminal. If you read back a few posts I was talking about what prevents crimes or bad behavior in people. I stated that the deterrent to his bad behavior is what actually happened in this case, which is his behavior was publicized. The truth of the outing is irrelevant to the preventative power of the possibility of being outed. The point of comparing average Joe to Aziz was an effort to point out that this high profile public shaming has very little likelihood of making any change to whatever “rape culture” is propagating this kind of problem.
John Morales wrote:
He was basically accused of being a rapist for exposing certain people in this thread to his opinion regarding the Aziz Azari scandal. Maybe everyone needs to relax. Dialogue is becoming almost impossible these days.
hookflash, an accusation by an anonymous commenter on another.
But the indignance at the reaction is not a disputation of its basis: “All of that is textbook rapist talk.”
(Wrong focus)
Well, if this is what the MeToo movement has been reduced to, god help the MeToo movement. The MeToo movement was a wake up call. But it is not the solution to the problem it bought to public attention. “Guilty because accused” is not a solution. It is the unfortunate negative consequence of that necessary wake up call. The solution is fixing the problems within organisations, corporations, and law enforcing agencies that allowed sexual abuse to happen. The solution is not vigilantism.
@ paxoll, #128
Every victim-blaming post you’ve made on this thread. Every time you’ve equated rape with a property crime in order to victim-blame on this thread. Every time you say that victims should do this and that and the other, with the only plausible reading of such comments being “it’s YOUR fault if you’re a victim.” I mean, you said exactly that at #48:
And you know what? You’re right. When my friend R and I were tortured by a bunch neo-Nazi skinhead scumbags, I could have done more. I SHOULD have done more. I should have fought like hell from the moment I realized they were surrounding us. I should have gouged out their eyes and crushed their larynxes, just like our mentor taught us. I should have been carrying my gun, like I was supposed to. I should have run, even if it meant a bullet in the back. I should have done something, anything other than acquiesce and let them take us.
But I didn’t, and believe me when I say I suffered for it. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt someone like that, although I knew even then that I’d regret it. I couldn’t bring myself to carry a gun, because I couldn’t imagine shooting someone. For my squeamishness, my friend lost his face, his ability to walk, and finally his will to live. For my hesitation, I have a lifetime of terror and pain and nightmares that won’t fade if I live to see the stars die.
It is my fault that R died. It is my fault that we were tortured. I know that, and I know what I should have done. I should have killed them all or died trying. I wish I had. I’ve learned my lesson. If I’m ever faced with a group of neo-Nazis again, I’ll do what I have to. Whatever it takes to never be victim again.
Does that satisfy you? Have I explored the depth of my failure thoroughly enough for you? Have I explained what I’ve learned clearly enough to you?
How is it that every single time PZ posts about feminism it turns into a person getting all offended that they got called on their rape apologetics. Others have already clarified exactly what is meant by the phrase, but perhaps another example will help clarify.
Woman writes article detailing her experience of predatory (and common) sexual coercion complete with dialogue and descriptions of multiple rapey actions.
If your response after reading her story is to claim that “We can never really know what happened” you don’t get to complain that people are not being kind and understanding about your irrational and misogynistic victim blaming.
@vucodlak only you know what happened, if you had fought back would you be dead? Would you rather be dead? Statistically for most crimes, complying with a criminal is the best way to avoid being physically harmed. That is not true in cases of murder, and it is not true in rape. You are not responsible for what happened to yourself or your friend. You are only responsible for your own actions and in this case only you know if those actions were the most rational for what happened TO you.
Tethys,
“Woman writes article detailing her experience of predatory (and common) sexual coercion complete with dialogue and descriptions of multiple rapey actions”
Well, obviously we first have to buy your version of what happened. But that’s what’s in dispute. What really happened? Despite your protestations, nobody except the two present really knows. The public at large are never going to know the truth. All we have is preferred narratives coloured by personal politics and personal experience.
The big picture is what matters here, Are we going to continue with “guilty because of accusation” or are we going to move past this vigilante phase and fix the underlying problem of corporations and police not having a proper and fair complaints system in place. There is supposed to be a presumption of innocence.
If you don’t care about the presumption of innocence, then don’t complain if one day you are not given the presumption of innocence and an accusation alone is sufficient to convict and sentence you to professional and social death.
Jesus fucking Christ. For these guys this is just an intellectual exercise. Of course nobody of us knows exactly what happened. Nobody is burning Ansari at the stake without due process. But can we at least take the victims claims seriously, please?
Why is it that rape victims always have to defend themselves? Why don’t the same rules apply to victims of theft or burglary?
“My car is stolen!”
“No, don’t rush to conclusions! Perhaps you should have been more clear that you didn’t want people to take it without explicit permission.”
Fuck that shit. Seriously. Heartless assholes.
reitpluim,
“Why is it that rape victims always have to defend themselves? Why don’t the same rules apply to victims of theft or burglary?”
Funny you should ask that.
Guess what?
IT SHOULD.
Read this report:
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2016/nov/09/san-diego-state-investigates-robbery-incident-hate/
Now read the follow up:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/10/women-in-hijabs-on-2-campuses-say-they-were-attacked-by-men-invoking-donald-trump/?utm_term=.332b73cb1cd8
Fortunately, this theft was not in a private setting between two individuals. It was in public and hence the details were able to be confirmed. In fact, the whole story was fabricated.
It happens. Be careful it doen’t happen to you.
If you deny due process to someone else, don’t be surprised it its denied to you. That is the lesson here. Also, if the legacy of MeToo is vigilantism, then wish MeToo never happened. If the legacy is fixing the underlying problem and putting in place a fair, equitable and workable complaints structure, then long live MeToo.
billyjoe:
But that’s the thing. It’s someone’s recounting, not a legal writ.
You want to offer sympathy one way, others see it otherwise.
Vigilantism, eh? You do not shy away from hyperbole.
Ohhh links to anecdotes! How convincing!! Better never ever believe a rape victim again; she may be lying! Poor male celebrity!!
reitpluim,
And the Aziz Ansari case is NOT an anecdote?
And I didn’t say “never believe a (alleged) rape victim again”.
The default is to believe the alleged victim.
The next step is to collect evidence and confirm if what the alleged victim claims is likely true or false.
It’s not: accusation->guilty->sentence
It’s: accusation->evidence->due process>guilty/innocent->sentence/freedom
You are missing a few steps there.
Do you want due process if accused of a crime?
If so, then why are you denying it to others?
John Morales,
“Vigilantism, eh? You do not shy away from hyperbole”
What do you call it when you act as judge jury and executioner?
Social media have judged him, convicted him, and sentenced him to professional death.
This is not hyperbole.
billyjoe:
I just noted there’s no charge and there is no trial; no judge sits and no jury deliberates — and of course there has been no execution.
But not you. You are not easily swayed.
Of course not. It’s entirely literal, and not even slightly exaggerated. Death, true death.
(Such tragedy!)
billyjoe
You’re misrepresenting my and everybody’s position here. Supporting a rape victim =/= sentencing the suspect without due process.
But it says a lot that you care more about the suspect than about the victim.
Asshole.
Also, take in consideration that this is the context in which we are having this debate. No other victims have to deal with what rape victims have to undergo.
Only in your misogynist mind. You ARE engaging in hyperbole. You have an opinion, but so do we, and we, like you are allowed to voice our opinions.
I don’t bother to listen to rape apologists/misogynists like you. You have nothing to say that is cogent and to the point. Just inane irrational blather with one point, protect your “bro” no matter what bad they did.
John,
“I just noted there’s no charge and there is no trial; no judge sits and no jury deliberates — and of course there has been no execution”
Social media have charged and convicted him of sexual assault and killed his professional career.
“But not you. You are not easily swayed.”
I’m swayed by guilty beyond reasonable doubt not accused therefore guilty.
Who exactly is it that is being easily swayed here?
“It’s entirely literal. Death, true death.”
I know that’s just rhetoric, but I said professional death. But I suppose, when you’ve lost an argument, you need to pretend that you’ve had a little victory here and there.
——————-
rietpluim,
“You’re misrepresenting my and everybody’position here. Supporting a rape victim =/= sentencing the suspect without due process”
She is not a victim, she’s an alleged victim.
And there’s no “suspect”. As far as I know the alleged crime hasn’t even been reported to the police
So, no, I don’t think I’m misrepresenting you.
“But it says a lot that you care more about the suspect than about the victim”
I don’t care about the alleged victim or the alleged suspect. I don’t know them. And I don’t know what happened. I care about due process and the bad consequences for our society if we jump straight from accusation to guilty.
This thread is rapist bingo card heaven. They’ve even gone to the desperate move where the rape apologist pretends that the person accused is actually on trial and we’re an actual jury in court.
Has “b****es be lying” been brought out yet? I think that was the only one I didn’t see. But based on the parts I quoted in post #88, that would be the only defense left for these assholes.
Aziz doesn’t have the right to get acting jobs or be a celebrity. If he wants to flip burgers fine by me, but I have no problem with people exercising their freedom of association and killing his acting/comedic career.
I’d have no problem with people doing that regardless of whether the case istrue. Not all comedians make it and stay popular. Why is Aziz so special?
Liar. All you care about is protecting a rapist, and sl*t shaming the woman. There has been no trial. There won’t be a trial. There is only one group of people who presume innocent until proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. The jury at a criminal trial.
Anybody reading about an incident can make up their own minds and judge probable guilt or not. You haven shown one iota of third party evidence otherwise.
Here at Pharyngula, this subject was discussed after prior incidents. We use Crystal Clear Consent in making our decisions regard when something is rape. It is our right to do so. And we can and do reject opinions that don’t use CCC to come to a probable conclusion.
In this case, CCC was violated.
I quite like Jill Filipovic’s take on this:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/16/aziz-ansari-story-missed-opportunity
I personally struggle to classify what I read as sexual assault, its very sleazy and creepy behaviour though.
Just read through CCC and find it hard to believe that anyone needs that explaining to them
Amazing.
I mean, let’s ignore for a moment that she actually didn’t undress herself, but being naked implies consent to what exactly?
Or wearing a short skirt, or a low cut shirt, or whatever.
Once a guy pulled down the zipper of my dress in the middle of the English department, which resulted in me standing there in my undies. Did I thereby consent to anybody touching me? Or was my consent implied in wearing a dress that allowed for this to happen?
Not to mention that he was constantly making advances which she had to either endure or fight off, which doesn’t give a lot of time for putting on clothing.
But again, every single aspect of the victim’s behaviour is dissected to find fault and heavens forbid she may have behaved not perfect in one instant*! Yet the guy’s behaviour gets a complete pass.
We’re not talking about how it is simply not ok to xyz without making sure the other person wants this to happen as well. Completely irrelevant. Apparently demanding that you don’t put your body parts into people’s orifices without making sure that they are ok with that is no big deal.
*just like skirt lengths, perfect is a very movable goalpost.
If nothing else, this is just the completely normal “Hey, don’t hang out with that guy, Sarah dated him once and he’s a total creep in private.” thing, writ large.
Even if nothing he did fit the definition of sexual assault – I think it plainly does fit the definition given by the US Department of Justice – he’s a fucking creep. People have every right not to associate with people they think are creepy, and that includes watching/buying things from/financially supporting them.
If I don’t have to associate with Tim The Creep From Accounting That Every Woman In The Office Has a Bad Story About, people are just as justified avoiding Aziz.
@paxol
Since you are responding to me with delusional blabbering about how retributive justice (an older concept, in some of its forms archaic and obsolete) is effective when I was talking about restorative justice (a newer concept used in most advanced societies at least in part), it is evident you do not know the terms used in the debate and do not bother to read up on them when confronted with them. I am not your tutor, neither am I your close acquintance, therefore I am neither obliged nor inclined to educate you. After you educate youself in basics, then maybe try and dispute some borderline issues. I am done discussing anything with you in this topic.
___________________________
One thing that I do not see anywhere articulated in this topic – there were two people present in that room, shee has given her account of what happened and he did not deny any of it and seems to have confirmed it.
So if anyone wants to be charitable towards him, they could argue that he screwed up mightily and hopefully will learn not to screw so in the future.
Instead the apologists not only choose to completely disbelieve the woman, they also choose to disbelieve the man confirming her story and acknowledging that he did at least something wrong. Because they choose to defend the guy in spite of his own words.
Had he vehemently denied everything like Trump does, those apologists would at least have a rhetorical leg to stand on, a fig-leaf to cover their bias, but as it is they shoot that one leg instead and flaunt their prejudices.
@Charly more strawmanning? You are quite pitiful. Please point out where
is not correct of restorative justice? What part of
or is not true of restorative justice? Restorative justice is a way to reform criminals, punitive/retributive justice prevents crime, not very well at all, but more then restorative. Unless you are simply referring to recidivism which was never the topic, the topic was this article and how it could of been prevented. The only real way to PREVENT crime is to target the underlying causes of crime such as poverty, mental illness, and social ideals. Your dishonest tactics here are quite disgusting.
This isn’t a court you idiot. I don’t presume innocence after I just read an account of sexual assault that was confirmed by the assaulter, I presume the women is telling the truth, period. Your claims of destroyed reputations are ridiculous. bill cosby woody allen roman polanski doanld trump…..the list is endless.
All rapists, none of whom seem to be suffering any ill effects from their destroyed reputations.
Plus there’s nothing wrong with someone destroying their own reputation by sexually harassing/assaulting/raping someone. Even if this leads to his sales/ratings/reputation plummeting, it’s all on him. You can’t also blame the consequences of your shitty actions on the person on the receiving end of your actions.
Indeed, I don’t think anyone in thread is asking for Aziz to be jailed for this – even someone like me who both believes that he is probably guilty of the accusations and that these accusations constitute sexual harassment doesn’t necessarily think that this is enough to mount a court case over, much less put him away.
That said, I can’t say I’d be mad if he got shitlisted in the entertainment industry for this – he doesn’t have a right to be rich and famous – and I certainly wouldn’t complain if his romantic prospects dried up as a response to this.
Real life isn’t a courtroom and I for one would much rather believe accusations and occasionally miss out on a romantic partner who was falsely accused than ignore accusations and end up stuck in a creep’s home with him repeatedly trying to put my hand on his dong.
Ever noticed how people who pretend to be for a fair trial, easily dismiss the available evidence? Again, this is only in rape cases.
Hmm, do men keep a running mental file of predatory creeps to be avoided? The main purpose in making this public is to warn others away from a known famous dude with an issue, not destroy his reputation. I don’t see a downside to the creeps and predators actually suffering some social consequences for their transgressions.
billyjoe @154:
:)
Such reflexive irony!
Vivec,
“Aziz doesn’t have the right to get acting jobs or be a celebrity. If he wants to flip burgers fine by me, but I have no problem with people exercising their freedom of association and killing his acting/comedic career”
There’s been one episode of bad sex or, at worst, marginal sexual assault reported by an anonymous female, and, on this basis, you are perfectly happy for the alleged perpetrator to be punished with professional death. Well, all I can say is I hope you live up to your own high standards one each and every occasion that you have sex.
“I’d have no problem with people doing that regardless of whether the case istrue. Not all comedians make it and stay popular. Why is Aziz so special?”
So, even if the case is false, you are happy for his professional career to be ended. That says a lot about you. I’ve read your two follow up comments as well, and it amazes me how you are so convinced you know exactly what happened and are completely happy to have this guy suffer professional death based on a single anonymously reported episode of bad sex/marginal sexual assault. As I said I hope you live up to own high standards. But, if not, you don’t have celebrity so the punishment exacted by society is likely to be very limited because almost no one will get to hear about it.
I have to add again that I don’t care about this case. I don’t know the alleged perpetrator and hadn’t heard of him before this episode. And I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if what the alleged victim reported was what actually happened in all the details, because I don’t know her. I’m just concerned for MeToo movement’s legacy. I think the hysteria needs to stop. We need to get on with the job of of reforming the system so that sexual assault is treated seriously.
Saad,
“They’ve even gone to the desperate move where the rape apologist pretends that the person accused is actually on trial and we’re an actual jury in court.”
Exactly where has this been said?
In fact, this is exactly the problem. There has been no Judge, Jury, or Conviction. Yet social media have convicted the alleged perpetrator purely on the basis of an accusation and have effectively sentenced him to professional death.
If you think this is fair, watch out, You may be next.
Well, billyjoe, as I don’t plan on not asking for consent before doing something with someone, unlike you, I don’t find that to be a reasonable concern.
But that YOU are so very worried about that tells me even more about you.
Nerd of Redhead,
“Liar. All you care about is protecting a rapist, and sl*t shaming the woman”
Well, you can choose to not believe me when I say that I do not care about this case, and that I worry for MeToo’s legacy going forwards if this hysteria continues. But that is the truth regardless.
“Anybody reading about an incident can make up their own minds and judge probable guilt or not.”
Sure. My opinion is that it is borderline between bad sex and sexual assault and my opinion is based on the report to a journalist by the anonymous alleged victim, and the alleged perpetrator’s texts to her the next morning. Your opinion is that is was a clear case of sexual assault by a creepy individual (or, if not your opinion, then the opinion of others in this comment section). The problem is that the alleged perpetrator’s life is being ruined as a result our mere opinions about what he may or may not be guilty of.
“You haven shown one iota of third party evidence otherwise.”
I don’t care about the case. I don’t know if it was bad sex or sexual assault. I don’t know, and I can’t know what happened. As I’ve been at pains to say, I’m concerned for MeToo’s legacy. I want something positive to come out of this and, in order for that to happen, we need to move on past this hysteria and start working to effect systemic changes. You can disbelieve me when I say this and call me a liar if you want. There’s not much more I can say.
“Here at Pharyngula, [w]e use Crystal Clear Consent in making our decisions regard when something is rape…In this case, CCC was violated”
Fine. I agree with these guidelines for casual sex encounters, andf this seems to have been the case, especially for the alleged perpetrator. But the fact remains that we cannot be certain of the facts of this case. As a result, we cannot say this is a rape case.
Liar. If you don’t care about it, shut the fuck up about it.
Still no EVIDENCE you are right….
And you still are denying the humanity and truthfulness of the woman.
Stop lying to yourself. Only then, will you stop lying to us.
Try a link with evidence in your next post if you are serious.
Those who deny the humanity and truthfulness of the woman by obsessing about the man, show their misogyny with prima facie evidence. An own goal. Thanks for playing, and you lose.
Rowan,
“Well, billyjoe, as I don’t plan on not asking for consent before doing something with someone, unlike you, I don’t find that to be a reasonable concern”
Unlike me?
You know nothing about me, so how an you possibly say that?
“But that YOU are so very worried about that tells me even more about you”
As I said, you know nothing about me.
This is just unsubstantiated opinionating on your part – luckily, being anonymous and not a celebrity anyway, I’m not going to suffer professionally as a result.
BillyJoe:
From this source:
My guess is the men who rape falsely deny it over 90% of the time.
What I did was to present some third party evidence. Where are your links to legitimate sources outside of yourself?
We here believe the woman, not the man, based on statistics, and if you can’t deal with that, it is your problem, not ours.
I suspect you have have some problems here, not us.
Silly me, I thought respecting other people’s boundaries was an extremely low fucking bar, not some impossibly high standard.
Nerd ofRedhead,
“Liar. If you don’t care about it, shut the fuck up about it”
I will – if you will all stop falsely accusing me of lying.
See how that works?
Stop accusing me of lying and I’ll stop trying to defend myself.
“Still no EVIDENCE you are right….
And you still are denying the humanity and truthfulness of the woman.”
Please read what I actually wrote.
(See how I have to keep defending myself).
I don’t deny the humanity and truthfulness of the woman. I just don’t know. I don’t know her and therefore I have no idea if she is truthful or not. She may or may not be telling the truth. She may or may not have embellished the account. She may or may not believe this embellished account. The alleged perpetrator may or may not have downplayed his actions. He may or may not have been genuine when he expressed sorrow if he caused her any harm. He may or may not have been genuine when he said he was not aware of any problems at the time.
I just don’t know.
“Try a link with evidence in your next post if you are serious.”
We all know what the alleged victim said and we all know what the alleged perpetrator said. There is no other evidence.
Your opinion: sexual assault/rape (correct me if I’m wrong)
My opinion: bad sex/borderline sexual assault.
Both worthless when it comes right down to it.
The current system and status quo is to deny everything reported by the victim, and attack their motivation. paxoll and billy are exhibit a and b of this victim blaming. Don’t pretend to be concerned about the legacy of metoo if you can’t manage step one….believe the victim. Men getting all testerical because the women have the temerity to publically out creeps is not actually a problem for the movement. I am 100% certain that I will never sexually assault anyone, so have no need to worry about unfounded accusations.
Nerd of Readhead,
“My guess is the men who rape falsely deny it over 90% of the time.
What I did was to present some third party evidence. Where are your links to legitimate sources outside of yourself?
We here believe the woman, not the man, based on statistics, and if you can’t deal with that, it is your problem, not ours.”
You must know that this is fallacious.
You cannot apply the statistics of a population to an individual.
It’s called “The Ecological Fallacy”:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy
“An ecological fallacy…is a logical fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data where inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inference for the group to which those individuals belong”
kupo,
“Silly me, I thought respecting other people’s boundaries was an extremely low fucking bar, not some impossibly high standard”
It’s not an impossibly high standard. It’s just difficult to live up to this standard, fully and completely, on every single occasion, throughout your entire life. It’s something to aim for as an ideal way to act. But, we’re all human. No one is perfect.
I’ve had exactly zero problem respecting other people’s boundaries. It’s really not difficult to read body language, even for someone like me who has some difficulty reading facial expressions, but if I’m not sure I just talk about it. And if the other party indicates any discomfort or hesitates, I back off.
No one is saying you need to know the other person’s boundaries ahead of time or intuit them from some vague body language. But when someone is giving clear signals like pulling away, moving your hand away, physically getting up and walking away, taking their hand back after you place it on your genitals, saying the words, “no,” “slow down,” “next time,” “not right now”, it’s the absolute minimum to expect you to back off.
Tethys,
“Believe the victim”
Yes, but here is what “believe the victim” means and doesn’t mean:
(This explanation was linked to on this blog a few weeks ago, so I hope it is satisfactory)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2018/01/means-believe-women/#XR4HRe7ZgD3XGDmj.99
“Women’s testimony shouldn’t be believed without question or exempted from verification. Women are human beings, and human beings sometimes lie or make mistakes. Insofar as it’s possible, we should always scrutinize a claim and determine whether it’s corroborated or disproved by available evidence”
And….
“However, although people sometimes lie, most people are trustworthy most of the time. The vast majority of the time, when someone tells you about something that happened to them, they’re telling the truth…And when one claim is corroborated by others – for example, multiple women accusing the same man of sexual harassment, with no obvious collaboration between them – the probative value of that evidence goes up dramatically. It’s possible that one witness is lying or mistaken; it’s far less likely that many witnesses are lying or mistaken in exactly the same way.”
And this is what “deny everything reported by the victim” means:
“If someone says, “We should believe women when they say that they’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted,” and your immediate reaction is “Oh no, here come the torches and pitchforks! All standards of evidence and critical thinking are about to be thrown in the trash! Lynch mobs will roam the streets! Innocent men’s lives will be destroyed without any proof!” – then that says more about you””
I am doing the former, not the latter.
If you don’t think so. Please read again what I’ve written.
@170
I don’t have sex, and have no desire to.
Easiest standards I’ve ever lived up to.
People have the right to choose not to patronize someone they dislike. I don’t shop at Chik FIl A because I think they’re bad people. I feel the same about Aziz.
You are making a big assumption when you think that I’ll treat a phrase like “professional death” as anything but a ridiculous bit of hyperbole. There are plenty of things a person that committed sexual assault can do.
Barring the aforementioned suggestion that he flip burgers or become a trashman, he could probably go full alt-right, write a manifesto, and get rich off of wingnut welfare. Given current evidence, he could even run for office. Hell, he could run for President!
Aziz isn’t more deserving of being rich and famous than the kid that makes your McGriddle – why should I give a shit if he loses his ability to be a rich and famous comedian?
kupo,
I agree with your first paragraph, except that you are surely not going to tell me that you have lived up to that ideal totally and completely, on every single occasion, throughout your entire life. What about when you were tired, or distracted?
But your second paragraph is based on a misinterpretation of “believe the victim”. I have linked to a pretty reasonable interpretation of this phrase in my last post. P. Z. Myers linked to it approvingly a couple of weeks ago.
Respecting others personal boundaries and verbal no’s is not something you accidentaly forget about if tired or hungry. No coercion is a minimum standard for consensual sex. There is no set of circumstances in which it is permissible.
Tethys,
Well, okay, you are happy to say that you are perfect, and I am perfectly happy to say that I am not. Before this I was happy to say that only God is perfect but I assumed he didn’t exist. Seems I was wrong.
:)
And here you thought I was making assumptions when you’ve basically admitted that when tired or distracted, you’re going to violate consent.
Rowan.
Except that what I actually said was that when you’re tired or distracted (or just had your house burned down, or your car stolen) you are probably not going to achieve your ideal of following the CCC totally and completely. You are going to be less than perfect.
Which is a bit different from: I’m going violate those rules when I’m tired or distracted,
@ paxoll, #142
I did fight. That isn’t the point.
The point is that it’s ridiculous, hurtful, and profoundly shitty to look at someone’s traumatic experience and tell them “well, if you had just done this, that, and the other, that wouldn’t have happened to you,” with a chaser of “you’ll know better next time.” It’s pure victim-blaming garbage.
@ billyjoe
From your #173:
Kind of like how I can’t be certain that I’ve devoted most of my free time over the last 3 days to arguing with rape apologists in this thread. I mean, this could all just be a really boring, frustrating dream. Probably not, though.
Seriously, what kind of argument is this? You’ve made it over and over, some variation of “we can’t really know for certain.” That’s technically true; we can’t really know much of anything about anything for certain, and reality is only what the majority agree it is, but… a majority of the people present in the situation being discussed agree to the basic facts, if not their interpretation. That kind of leaves you without a leg to stand on.
You don’t know, you just don’t know, but the people who were actually there pretty much agree on what happened. We’ve reached the point where you’re just rejecting the agreed upon reality because… what? It might hurt the perpetrator’s professional reputation? This is not a logical argument you’re making.
Historically, famous men have seen no consequences for this kind of behavior. If, somehow, this does serious damage to Ansari’s career, I won’t call that a bad thing. He abused someone for his own pleasure. He’s admitted that he did what Grace said.
This (from your #182)-
And this (from your #186)-
And this (from your #188)-
-is ludicrous. It isn’t that difficult. As I’ve already made clear in this thread, I’m a terrible person, but I can say with confidence that I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone. I don’t do anything remotely sexual without asking first. I’m awkward and shy and terrible at reading people, but I still manage not to sexually assault people. It’s really just so easy to not cross those lines. Lines Ansari crossed over and over again in a single encounter… I can’t believe we’re still having to argue over this.
One more thing has popped to my mind yesterday: I know a few professional actors personally. They are really, really good at reading both verbal and non-verbal cues, body language and emotions, as well at replicating them at will. That is because empathy is literally – as one of them told to me – their core tool of the trade. A good actor can put themselves into the mind of someone with whom they completely and utterly disagree – and convince you that they mean it.
Aziz Ansari is a professional actor. It is very unlikely he is bad at empathising with other people.
Ad perfection, I will bite: I am not perfect. I am shitty at reading nonverbal cues, I cannot flirt if my life hung upon it and on multiple occasions I did say/do things that I wish five seconds later i did not say/do (now less, since with age comes experience). As a child and during adolescence I had relatively little experience with other people so I did not learn how to really talk with people either. Yet even so I never raped nor even attempted to rape anyone. The worst I have done was I when I was drunk out of my skull and in the euphoria of new year celbrations in my twenties, I tried to kiss a woman with whom I danced who did not reciprocate it. Even in my drunken stupor and euphoria I recognized within senods that I oversteped. And more importantly – I have never done anything like that ever again, neither drunk nor sober. Every mistake I have done I have done only once. An honest mistake that lasts for the better part of a night and multiple attempts at the same thing? Not effing likely. Not impossible, because there are plenty of examples in media, where his behaviour is presented as the corect one and socialization is a strong factor, but still unlikely, especially for someone who proclaims themselves to be feminist.
But even if we grant the most charitable interpretation that this indeed was the case and Aziz Ansari has made an (slew of) honest clueless mistake(s), this should be a learning opportunity for him – and, again more importanlty, for any guy who might make that mistake in the future – at learning. Neither he, nor anyone who reads this story, should ever make that mistake again, period. And they sould be gratefull for the opportunity to educate themselves before commiting a very bad mistake at best, a rape at worst.
Instead of accepting that opportunity to becomme better persons for the future, what we see here by some is a stallwart denial of what happened according to both participants and offended huffing and puffing about how unfair and useless it is to say that someone did screw up when the did, in fact, screw up. We even see arguing at the same time that rough punishment after the fact is the only thing that works whilst saying that trying to use an example to prevent similar actions in other people is somehow unfair punishment of this one person. Curiouser and curiouser.
But after that same reaction came even after a very milquetoast and entirely reasonable advice “Guys, don’t do that.”, it is not really suprising that it is comming now.
vucodlak,
“The people who were there pretty well agree on what happened…he’s admitted that he did what Grace said”
There were only two people present: The alleged victim and the alleged perpetrator. If you think the alleged perpetrator agrees with the alleged victim about what took place, please post a link to your evidence for this.
What follows is the sum total of what I been able to find on the internet about what the alleged perpetrator has written about the incident:
Text message to the alleged victim the next morning:
“Hey, It was fun meeting you last night, I just dropped my roll off film last night. Fingers crossed for some good shots”
After she text back her reply detailing how she felt, he responded with:
“I’m so sad to hear this, All I can say is, it would never have been my intention to make you or anyone feel the way you described. Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.”
After the accusation became public, he responded with the following:
“In September of last year, I met a woman at a party. We exchanged numbers. We texted back and forth and eventually went on a date. We went out to dinner, and afterwards we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual.
“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. I took her words to heart and responded privately after taking the time to process what she had said.
“I continue to support the movement that is happening in our culture. It is necessary and long overdue.” – Aziz Ansari”
If this is agreement between the two present, I like to see what a disagreement looks like. However, I may have missed something so, If there is anything else, please post a link.
vudodlak,
“reality is only what the majority agree it is”
You know this cannot be correct.
Apart from everything else, what the majority agrees is right changes over centuries, decades, and even from one year to the next.
Wow, I never thought that not assaulting people, sexually or otherwise, means I am a perfect person. I have no interest in crappy coerced sex, only wildly enthusiastic consensual sex. This does not change if I am tired or distracted. Being tired is not an excuse to mistreat others beyond the age of 3 or 4, so if you as an adult think its reasonable, you should just stay away from other people completely.
The things he was doing to her require explicit consent. When it’s a stranger you’ve just met, it’s even more important and needs to be full verbally communicated consent.
When someone keeps moving their hand away from where you’re putting it and you keep trying to move it back, that’s inexcusable. When someone says they’re not ready to have sex and you reassure them “okay, let’s just sit on the couch with our clothes on” and then again try to do things to them, that’s inexcusable. When someone says to you in frustration “you guys are all the same” and you respond by forcefully kissing them, that’s inexcusable.
So you misogynist fucks are left with only two choices:
1) You either disagree with the above paragraph (meaning you’re literally pro-sexual assault and pro-rape)
2) You say that Grace is lying about those things and they never happened (meaning you’re a staunch supporter of rape culture )
A man being turned on and wanting sex does not mean the woman he’s with now has an obligation. It doesn’t mean the onus is on her to ensure her safety by leaving.
hookflash, #102
Holy shit, some of you guys come across as hopelessly blind to what rape culture is. I’m actually starting to believe some of you think rape is only when a big scary man in a mask forces himself on a woman in a dark alley.
Just for the record, stranger rapes as described above are rather rare, and account for only 3% of rapes. It also happens to be the rate of confirmed false reporting of sexual assault, which means that 97% percent of allegations are true. Those are some overwheleming odds in favor of believing the victim as a matter of course.
Yes, I can say that I have absolutely always respected my partner, his desires and boundaries. I am a lot more, uhm, adventurous when it comes to sexual stuff than my partner, yet I never even tried to convince him (much less cajole or coerce him or simply “surprise” him) after I made a proposal and he rejected it.
Should he ever change his mind about some things he knows that I’m keen and he can bring them up. It is literally that easy.
+++
From the wonderful Ijeoma Oluo What type of man do you want to be?
It starts out with a very good analogy, you should really check it out.
Yes Billyjoe, because the first thing I’m gonna do after my house burns down, or my car is stolen, is have sex with someone. Or when I’m totally exhausted. Or distracted by TV. Because that’s totally a thing I’d do. Except not.
I am indeed 100% able to not sexually assault someone because if I’m interested in sex, that’s all I’m focused on. If I’m tired, I don’t want sex. If I’m distracted, I don’t want sex. If my car is stolen, I don’t want sex (wtf is wrong with you). If my house has just burned down, I don’t want sex (seriously, those are the WORST scenarios. You are terrible at scenarios. Hopefully you are better at consent, but I doubt it at this point.) As I’m asexual, but not sex-repulsed, if I want sex it’s because I absolutely want that moment of intimacy so I’m certainly not going to do anything to make my fiance uncomfortable, nor him me.
@paxoll
Vivec brought their experience up on a public forum. The rational implication of that is they are willing to use their own experience to further the topics being discussed.
Vivec gets to use Vivec’s experience. I get to look at how you used Vivec’s experience. Separate phenomena with respect to…
I expressed my sympathies for what Vivec went through [and then explained the logic of Charlys’ argument as it would apply in their experience.]
Your challenge with Charly was a SEPARATE social interaction. You chose to do two things. 1) Express sympathy for Vivec.
2) Apply social pressure as if they were subject to your side of an argument with someone else.
If you actually cared you have stopped at 1. Instead, without caring to see if they wanted to, you tried to pressure Vivec into taking sides in your problem with Charly. Go argue with Charly coward.
That is not dehumanizing, that is being inclusive and intellectually honest.
You literally used Vivec and their experience to apply social pressure on someone else’s argument. You didn’t even ask first, and I see you have not acknowledged Vivec telling you how they felt.
I say again, dehumanizing AND cowardly. Now cowardly on two counts.
If the reason Vivec brought up personal experience was supposed to be some kind of argument trump card of “you can’t dispute my opinion because I have personal experience” then I hate to say they were mistaken.
Funny how you haven’t actually thought of asking Vivec why they brought up their experience.
But that’s also behavior consistent with the problem. You can’t or won’t respect personal boundaries and have shown no signs of even the slightest awareness of Ansari’s. I’ve yet to see you quote one problem from Grace and acting like other people should look for flaws for you is you pushing your work onto others.
Grow a fucking spine and actually accept how other people feel so that you can communicate with people about their experiences instead of using them in your personal disputes.
I’ll bookmark an html guide.
@paxoll
“Vivec brought their experience up on a public forum. The rational implication of that is they are willing to use their own experience to further the topics being discussed.”
Vivec gets to use Vivec’s experience. I get to look at how you used Vivec’s experience. Separate phenomena with respect to…
“I expressed my sympathies for what Vivec went through [and then explained the logic of Charlys’ argument as it would apply in their experience.]
Your challenge with Charly was a SEPARATE social interaction. You chose to do two things.”
1) Express sympathy for Vivec.
2) Apply social pressure as if they were subject to your side of an argument with someone else.
If you actually cared you have stopped at 1. Instead, without caring to see if they wanted to, you tried to pressure Vivec into taking sides in your problem with Charly. Go argue with Charly coward.
That is not dehumanizing, that is being inclusive and intellectually honest.
You literally used Vivec and their experience to apply social pressure on someone else’s argument. You didn’t even ask first, and I see you have not acknowledged Vivec telling you how they felt.
I say again, dehumanizing AND cowardly. Now cowardly on two counts.
“If the reason Vivec brought up personal experience was supposed to be some kind of argument trump card of “you can’t dispute my opinion because I have personal experience” then I hate to say they were mistaken.”
Funny how you haven’t actually thought of asking Vivec why they brought up their experience.
But that’s also behavior consistent with the problem. You can’t or won’t respect personal boundaries and have shown no signs of even the slightest awareness of Ansari’s. I’ve yet to see you quote one problem from Grace and acting like other people should look for flaws for you is you pushing your work onto others.
Grow a fucking spine and actually accept how other people feel so that you can communicate with people about their experiences instead of using them in your personal disputes.
And of course I fucked up this part. (Moved “)
“I expressed my sympathies for what Vivec went through [and then explained the logic of Charlys’ argument as it would apply in their experience.”
Your challenge with Charly was a SEPARATE social interaction. You chose to do two things.
1) Express sympathy for Vivec.
2) Apply social pressure as if they were subject to your side of an argument with someone else.
@raaak 131
You can’t bring yourself to quote Grace and want to complain about us? If you can’t objectively show a problem I’m going challenge your feelings about their communication until I do. We are choosing to communicate about it and you show no reasons not to. You only apply social pressure on us in other ways, curious that.
Otherwise I don’t see you quoting any accusations if rape either. Clearly you feel we are but if you can’t handle what people are actually discussing independent of your feelings you are going to have a hard time in life. Good luck with that.
The use of courtroom and due process in people who fear the discussion about Grace’s experience is fascinatingly manipulative. This is not a courtroom yet here they are either acting like we are or pretending to act like we are.
Courtroom and due process has failed victims. Anyone bringing them up has the obligation to show relevance. Rape and sexual assault in general is sadly common, just who do you think you are scaring?
@billyjoe 149
You so clearly want people here to act like we are in a courtroom how about you grow up and act like you believe it? Do you acknowledge the fact that Grace was pressured into sex?
Can you quote where Grace was untruthful about there boundaries being repeatedly crossed? Or where Grace was untruthful about not wanting to have sex or engage in sex acts? Or where she was untruthful about Ansari moving Grace’s hand back to where they moved it from repeatedly?
If you want other people to act someone is not telling true things AND act like a pretend defense attorney for Ansari you don’t look like you really care about courtroom or due process. LARP it if you must but I’m not convinced of your commitment.
@Brony, sorry but this is not a “separate social interaction”. It is a public forum where everyone is an audience and participant. If vivec wanted a private conversation this is not the correct place to do that. Which goes to what I said
So when you say
you are first making some bizarre assumption that you can’t BOTH show sympathy and have a disagreement with someone, secondly you are ignoring the whole part about the rational implication. Which you did really dispute, simply said that I
. Why not explain why its not a rational implication? That is the essentially what this whole discussion forum is about is it not? What the rational implication of her “signals” were to Aziz, and what was the rational implication of his actions were to her? I mentioned this option specifically because of Vivecs reaction to my post.
Maybe it was on the passive aggressive side, but with the vitriolic irrational outbursts by some people here it seems more appropriate to talk about their arguments instead of to them.
Which brings me to a point that seems to be the backlight to this instance and to Vucodlak. This isn’t about what is kind or compassionate. Just because something makes a victim of a crime feel worse, or shitty, doesn’t make it victim blaming, doesn’t make it not true. Doctors, therapists, friends ect, lie to victims all the time (to be fair, doctors and therapists, tend to divert rather then lie). They do it to make the person feel better so they are less depressed and more likely to take positive action in their life. Most victims already feel depressed because they know of things they could have done differently to avoid the specific outcome that happened. To the victim, they know what needs to change and often need professional therapy to help them make those changes. To society as a whole, we need to analyze the problem and determine what was wrong and how we as a society can implement changes and as individuals need to behave if we find ourselves in similar situations.
Gotta love the society as whole is somehow responsible for the menz who just can’t be bothered to talk to or listen to the person they want to have sex with. It really isn’t hard to be respectful. Just use the same rules you should have learned by kindergarten.
Wow, the MRA’s are still shitting this place? They don’t know when to stop, do they?
@paxoll
I’m specifically criticizing how you used Vivec’s experience in your comment @97. This is about what I think about what you did. You can to try press me towards what Vivec did but that remains you trying to change the subject with the same form of social pressure.
97 in full.
“Whatever happened to you” reflects nothing of what Vivec typed. It’s entirely generic. But I officially acknowledge that you did it. Do you need anything more here?
Now since I’m a separate human being responding to you and not Vivec I’ll note your effort is then spent on trying to at least two things that I’ll talk about because I want to (numbers added by me):
(1) “asking” Vivec if they look for fault in themselves with respect to “whatever happened”. And not for any reasons you see that you provide in quotes from Vivec but…
(2) You do so because of a claim with literally no evidence that Charly thinks Vivec did something bad.
I’m not budging from my issues with this comment and how you chose to use someone against someone else. Since you do no work work worthy of the word argument I’m fine describing your behavior as simply using Vivec as a tool.
The “purpose” of my comment, aside from me being triggered as all hell by the victim blaming bullshit and wanting to explain why this story resonates with me, is that it shows a situation where nothing but magical oracular foresight would have allowed me to avert it.
Sure, if I had a time machine, I could go back in time and say “Hey young Vivec, don’t hook up with this person, they’re going to groom you into letting them sexually assault you repeatedly”, but that’s fucking useless from the point of view of someone without oracular foresight or a time machine.
If you’d told past me “Don’t let people groom you into letting them sexually assault you”, it would’ve been useless advice.
By definition in this context, grooming happens without the awareness of the person being groomed.
It’s like telling someone “watch out for that invisible axe murderer” and then blaming them for failing to see the invisible axe murderer and getting murdered.
I’d appreciate not being repeatedly tacitly accused of claiming that I can’t be disagreed with because I was assaulted. Especially given that I’ve never said anything like that.
@Brody, Charly was saying that any form whatsoever of; victim x should have done y. Is victim blaming. Vivec made a large post on how they were a victim. Applying argument from charly to experience of vivec, gives vivec an insight into a rational conclusion of the argument, and gives another situational analogy to show why charlys argument is wrong. I did not claim that Charly thought anything about Vivec, only that IF they did those things that are nearly universal then according to Charlys’ argument it would be considered victim blaming. Sorry if you think that is insensitive and assholish. You have given me exactly 0 reasons I should care about your opinion.
@Vivec I didn’t claim that was your reason, I claimed the rational inference to you posting your experience was for it to be used in the discussion. If you don’t want that I recommend not posting about it on a public forum. If you are being “triggered” I also recommend leaving the forum. I’m maybe wrongly assuming that the purpose of this forum is rational discourse, not emotional venting.
paxoll,
1. you’re not being rational
2. ratio is not magic
3. people communicate on various levels, including non-rational ones, even on this blog
@paxoll
Your problems with Charly are also separate from my problems with your comment at 97. As I noted you provided no detail of Charly’s comment. So not only are you still ignoring my interest in your behavior, you are doing with something you should be taking up with Charly.
Right, and I, not being an emotionless Vulcan, voiced my extreme displeasure with the details of my sexual assault being used as a rhetorical tool to snipe at someone else.
This is a silly statement to make, if you have any idea of PZ’s views on matters.
(He routinely mocks the inhumane “no feelings only facts” vulcan-fetishist branch of the skeptic community).
paxoll,
Just so you know: Vivec is a well respected, highly appreciated, long-time commenter on this blog. You are none of those, on the contrary; and if you choose to follow your own recommendation, you won’t be missed.
So please go shit some other place, and we can continue civil discourse without you.
To wit, here are some quotes from PZ on the matter:
Another view of this event:
http://www.tmz.com/2018/01/16/ashley-banfield-aziz-ansari-accuser-sexual-misconduct/
And another:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/opinion/aziz-ansari-babe-sexual-harassment.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article
@Vivec ok, then we are both welcome here, and I won’t feel bad if you are “triggered”.
@rietpluim I can see the vast amount of civil discourse in all the posts that are not to or from me. Guess having someone to try and steer this conversation into some kind of productive critical thought process is probably a good thing.
@222
Indeed, the triggering was value-neutral, given that I don’t think you did it on purpose (nor are you the only person guilty).
That said, the victim blaming bullshit is still reprehensible.
Tethys,
“Wow, I never thought that not assaulting people, sexually or otherwise, means I am a perfect person”
Please don’t mischaracterise what I said.
You are a good person if you aim always to follow those guidelines. You are a perfect person if you have managed to totally and completely follow them every single time for your entire life.
That is what I said.
“Being tired is not an excuse to mistreat others”
That’s not what I said.
It is not an excuse, it is an explanation of why we can’t live up to those guidelines, totally and completely, on every occasion throughout our entire lives despite our best intentions. When we are tired or distracted, our behaviour is affected, we don’t behave optimally. I don’t think I’m saying anything controversial.
“so if you as an adult think its reasonable, you should just stay away from other people completely”
So, everyone who is not perfect should stay away from other people completely?
This is going to be lonely world – you and that other perfect person!
Saad,
“When someone keeps moving their hand away from where you’re putting it and you keep trying to move it back, that’s inexcusable. When someone says they’re not ready to have sex and you reassure them “okay, let’s just sit on the couch with our clothes on” and then again try to do things to them, that’s inexcusable. When someone says to you in frustration “you guys are all the same” and you respond by forcefully kissing them, that’s inexcusable”
Again, you are assuming that what the alleged victim said happened actually did happen exactly like she said. Do you then not accept the definition of “believe the victim” that I copied from a link by PZ Myers? If so, I didn’t see you complain on that thread. Maybe I missed it.
“So you misogynist fucks are left with only two choices:
1) You either disagree with the above paragraph (meaning you’re literally pro-sexual assault and pro-rape)
2) You say that Grace is lying about those things and they never happened (meaning you’re a staunch supporter of rape culture )”
Thanks for the nice words,
And, again, why the mischaracterisation of what I’m saying?
I didn’t say the alleged victim was lying, I said I don’t know. I don’t know if she is telling the truth, telling an exaggerated version of what happened, deliberately lying, innocently got it wrong, or misinterpreted what happened, or various combinations of all of these things. I also don’t know if the alleged perpetrator was lying, telling the truth, innocently got it wrong, deliberately minimizing what happened, etc etc etc. I don’t know.
So neither of those two options apply.
You whole argument is based on you claiming to know what happened. But you can’t possibly know that.
Tethys,
“Just for the record, stranger rapes as described above are rather rare, and account for only 3% of rapes. It also happens to be the rate of confirmed false reporting of sexual assault, which means that 97% percent of allegations are true. Those are some overwheleming odds in favor of believing the victim as a matter of course”
Except that the incident we are discussing is neither “stranger rape”, nor was it a “reported sexual assault”. So, not only are you committing the ecological fallacy of assigning the characteristics of the group to the individual, that individual does not even belong to that group.
Giliell,
“Yes, I can say that I have absolutely always respected my partner, his desires and boundaries. I am a lot more, uhm, adventurous when it comes to sexual stuff than my partner, yet I never even tried to convince him (much less cajole or coerce him or simply “surprise” him) after I made a proposal and he rejected it.”
That’s admirable.
I hope your partner agrees ;)
Not to assume that you have had any, but what about casual sexual encounters? They are another kettle of fish altogether. You don’t know the person so this could prove a fair bit trickier than sex with your regular partner. .
Oh, that is an easy one: the more casual, the more careful you must be. Because unlike couples who know each other well there will be neither estblished no go areas nor “I’m generally fine” areas nor are people familiar with each other’s body language.
It’s really that easy. Just like I will ask people if they have allergies or special requirements when I invite them for dinner.
Rowan,
“Yes Billyjoe, because the first thing I’m gonna do after my house burns down, or my car is stolen, is have sex with someone. Or when I’m totally exhausted. Or distracted by TV. Because that’s totally a thing I’d do. Except not.”
Come on, be fair, I obviously did not mean RIGHT after your house burns down, or RIGHT after your car is stolen. I mean in the period of time after that, when you haven’t fully gotten over those incidents yet but have recovered sufficiently to feel like having sex again.
“I am indeed 100% able to not sexually assault someone because if I’m interested in sex, that’s all I’m focused on”
Couldn’t that be a problem though. If you’re totally focused on the sex, might you not forget even just one of those consent rules. It would be a bit distracting, don’t you think, going through that list of consent rules and asking for consent at every single step of your sexual experience.
“If my house has just burned down, I don’t want sex (seriously, those are the WORST scenarios. You are terrible at scenarios.”
Except that it’s not my scenario. I didn’t say JUST burned down.
“As I’m asexual, but not sex-repulsed, if I want sex it’s because I absolutely want that moment of intimacy so I’m certainly not going to do anything to make my fiance uncomfortable”
Well, that puts a different complexion on the discussion.
Maybe consider that it’s not exactly the same for someone who is not asexual.
Brony,
“Do you acknowledge the fact that Grace was pressured into sex”
Do you acknowledge that the following is part of the definition of “believe the victim” as per the link supplied approvingly by PZ Myers a couple of weeks ago:
“Women’s testimony shouldn’t be believed without question or exempted from verification. Women are human beings, and human beings sometimes lie or make mistakes. Insofar as it’s possible, we should always scrutinize a claim and determine whether it’s corroborated or disproved by available evidence”
Giliell,
“Oh, that is an easy one: the more casual, the more careful you must be. Because unlike couples who know each other well there will be neither estblished no go areas nor “I’m generally fine” areas nor are people familiar with each other’s body language”
Finally something I can agree with. :)
“It’s really that easy”
Damn. No, I don’t agree it’s easy. :(
@ billyjoe, #194
Yes, I know only Ansari and Grace were present; that’s why I said everyone present agrees. They both agree a sexual encounter took place. Ansari does not deny any part of Grace’s account, save to say that he felt it was all consensual.
I’m not going to quote the part about him moving her hand to his dick over and over again. It’s in the original account, and it has been quoted several times in this thread. Surely you’ve read it. Ansari does not deny this took place. He says he “misread” the situation. Give me a fucking break, no one is that dense.
Ansari doesn’t dispute any details, he essentially just says she wanted it. And, once he saw he might get in trouble, that changed to “I’m sorry, but it’s a total surprise to me that you didn’t want to do anything of those things, just because you kept moving away and telling me no.” So yeah, their accounts both agree on what happened. Ansari is just claiming the poor little woman is confused, that she really wanted it in spite of all the indications she gave to the contrary.
From your #195:
How I wish it weren’t. I’m not interested in debating the nature of reality with you.
Nope.
Also, I expect people to still have brains when aroused. Asexual merely means I don’t find things sexually attractive. It doesn’t mean I can’t become aroused. So, I’ll quote myself again.
“As I’m asexual, but not sex-repulsed, if I want sex it’s because I absolutely want that moment of intimacy so I’m certainly not going to do anything to make my fiance uncomfortable, nor him me.”
And the fact that you do NOT find it easy or reasonable to make sure there’s consent, especially in a casual encounter, makes you really, really scary. Do you honestly NOT SEE that you are *admitting* that you are totally capable of and probably have violated your partner’s consent?
Maybe you’re laboring under the idea that asking consent can’t be sexy or is a dry list… because that’s not the case at all. “Do you like this?” “Would you like me to…?” “Can I do ….?” can certainly fit into a sexy fun time mood.
Really, if you think that not sexually assaulting somebody is hard, you should not have sex.
Because the risk of doing serious harm outweighs any interest you may have in sex.
It’s not like anybody ever said you need to follow some check list. Nobody takes issue with someone gently moving somebody else’s hand towards their crotch once. You move, they happily move along and are active? Fine.
They pull away, you leave it at that, fine.
In my experience, the people who claim that consent is hard are those who are looking for an excuse to violate it.
Rowan
Right, isn’t it?
Consent, also verbal, can be so damn hot. I mean, why do they think people invented sexting?
QFT. This is why “#metoo went too far – you cannot even flirt anymore” is utter bullshit.
vicodlak,
“They both agree a sexual encounter took place”
And that’s all they agreed on.
“Ansari does not deny any part of Grace’s account…Ansari does not deny this took place…Ansari doesn’t dispute any details”
You said that three times, totally missing the point that he did not actually comment on any details either to confirm or deny them.
“he essentially just says she wanted it”
Why paraphrase what he said. Why not just quote him word for word. He said, and I quote: “We went out to dinner, and afterwards we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual”
“And, once he saw he might get in trouble…”
No, that is your interpretation. For all you know, he might have been genuinely sorry that he had made her feel the way she detailed in her text to him. Or he could have been thinking ahead and thinking what he could say to save his skin. You could have no idea which of these is true.
“that changed to “I’m sorry, but it’s a total surprise to me that you didn’t want to do anything of those things, just because you kept moving away and telling me no.” ”
And now you’re using quotation marks implying a direct quote. But he actually said nothing like that. It’s not even close to a paraphrase. This is what he said, and I quote:
“I’m so sad to hear this, All I can say is, it would never have been my intention to make you or anyone feel the way you described. Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.”
“Ansari is just claiming the poor little woman is confused, that she really wanted it in spite of all the indications she gave to the contrary”
Those phrases “poor little woman is confused” and “she really wanted it” are yours, not his. You are spinning a story not based on anything he said. You could be correct about what was in Ansari’s mind. Or you could be completely off the mark. And you could have no idea which is the actual case
Rowan,
“Maybe you’re laboring under the idea that asking consent can’t be sexy”
No. I’m saying it is difficult to the point of impossible, to be perfect.
You disagree. Fine. I’ll leave it at that,
Giliell,
“In my experience, the people who claim that consent is hard are those who are looking for an excuse to violate it”
Or maybe we’re just human and recognise that we are not perfect.
Apparently some of you are. Fine. I don’t know you so I don’t know if that is true or not. I do know that in general humans are not perfect. I don’t know of any exceptions but, then again, I haven’t searched the whole world either,
Let’s just leave it there.
If you think you can’t be certain that your partner is consenting, then you need to never have sex billyjoe. Because you’re saying you can’t be certain you aren’t going to assault or rape someone. In fact, don’t touch anyone other than yourself ever again. That way you can know for certain that you aren’t assaulting or harming anyone else.
Seriously, there is nothing difficult about asking a partner if they’re okay with someone. There’s nothing difficult about asking a stranger if they’re okay with a hug. But since even asking before hugging is apparently beyond your ability or desire, you are a danger and a menace to every person around you.
*if they’re okay with something. It’s almost 4am. yay insomnia.
So now it’s the “nobody is perfect” excuse.
My bingo card is full.
Rowan,
Well, we’re going around in circles. You continue to misrepresent what I’m saying and then coming to false conclusions based on your misrepresentation. I don’t need to heed your advice because it doesn’t apply to me. So, as I said, let’s leave it there. It’s not 4am here, it’s just after 11pm. I’m doing fine.
rietpluim,
Hmmm…rietpluim. Are you a magician? If so, I trust you are a perfect one. Just remember how you got to be perfect and you’ll understand the futility of your argument. ;)
@billyjoe
You are here trying to get us to change our behavior and expecting us to do your work.
That section is irrelevant until you present a reason to disbelieve Grace.
That would be a quote of something untruthful lazy. So far I see you trying to manipulate another social structure to get people to stop talking about Grace’s communication about Ansari. Fuck the abstract, get real.
BillyJoe, you are simply trolling and don’t have a point.
That is what I see from your inability to provide any evidence for your case.
At the moment, all I see is WAHHHHHH….I might have to pay attention to a woman.
No, Billyjoe, it’s not about being perfect.
It’s about understanding that sexual assault isn’t a traffic accident that happens because of external circumstances or because somebody’s attention lapsed for a moment.
“Do not stick anything into people’s orifices without being sure they want this” is not an unreasonable request. Neither is “do not touch people’s crotch/butt/breasts or make them touch yours without consent”
There are few honest mistakes here and those that happen are only credible as long as the person takes responsibility and does not whine that they’re being held to an unreasonable standard of perfection.
billyjoe @225:
And yet you are not wondering if Aziz is lying, telling the truth, telling an exaggerated version of what happened, deliberately lying, innocently got it wrong, or misinterpreted what happened, or various combinations of all of these things. You only wonder about the woman involved.
Interesting.
Nobody accidentaly commits sexual assault, period. it sounds to me like billyjoe is working really hard to maintain some personal denial, and has assaulted women.
My statistic about stranger rape was clearly an FYI. I can only give accurate information, I can’t force you to comprehend the logical ramifications of statistics. Especially when you have a clear desire to claim that basic respect is so hard as to be impossible standard.
I would go so far as to say that anyone who (granting this absurd idea that it’s a reasonably common idea) ignores consent out of being “tired” or whatever counts as being a rapist just as much as someone who does it intentionally. The fact that you didn’t mean to rape your partner doesn’t un-rape them.
Yep. It simply means that they wanted to have sex and they decided to satisfy their desires regardless of what the consequences might be for the other person.
@ billyjoe, #238
Because you’re so goddamn thick, I mistakenly thought repetition might get through. I was wrong.
Like cold treacle pudding.
Yes, I should have used single quotation marks. For the exactly zero people who are confused by my error: I used the wrong punctuation, and what lay between double quotes in my comment is NOT something Ansari said, but my interpretation of his response. I was quoting myself as I mimicked the excuses of a person who has committed a sexual assault- the quote marks there were intended to indicate that I was using an especially scornful tone. Sorry about the punctuation confusion.
I’m tired of arguing with you. Whether you’ve assaulted someone (or someones) in the past, and are looking for absolution, or you’re looking excuse future possible assaults because consent is just so gosh-darn hard you guise, you’ve been arguing in bad faith from the beginning.
Do yourself (and anyone you might come into contact with in the future) a favor and own up to whatever you’ve done (or would do). Not here, but to yourself. Learn to live with it, and learn how not to repeat your wrongs, instead of pretending you’ve done no wrong at all. Because you’ll never convince anyone here of that, and I don’t think I’m alone when I say I am tired of watching you make excuses.
If you think about it, the “nobody’s perfect guise we all violate consent once in a while ;)” thing, outside of being stomach-churningly disgusting, is just the same appeal to a silent majority all cranks use. It’s the same “he’s just saying what everyone knows but is too afraid to say” bullshit that racists and sexists throw out constantly.
Now, I’m biased as hell because I never want to have sex again and the concept makes me nauseous, but even if like 90% of people ~accidentally violated consent when tired~ or whatever, I’m cool with considering them rapists. It’s not like we excuse people from vehicular manslaughter if they were ~just too damn sleepy~ to stay on their side of the highway.
Brony,
“You are here trying to get us to change our behavior”
Initially, yes, but it’s pretty clear that you are totally consumed by your narrative, so I would be fighting a losing battle. Now I’m just defending myself against misrepresentation and unjustified accusations.
“and expecting us to do your work”
Not sure what you mean. I’ve been doing most of the work. Posting what people have actually said, instead of what people have imagined they said. Calling out people for putting word into people’s mouths and thoughts into their heads, Correcting errors. Pointing out unsubstantiated conclusions. Linking to articles referenced by PZ Myers, and quoting extensively from them. Repeating these quotes when people seem to have forgotten or ignored them…
“That section is irrelevant until you present a reason to disbelieve Grace”
Well, case in point: I have never said that I disbelieve Grace.
I have said that I don’t know – I can’t possibly know – if she is telling the truth, or embellishing the truth, or lying, or innocently got it wrong, or misinterpreted what happened.
“So far I see you trying to manipulate another social structure to get people to stop talking about Grace’s communication about Ansari”
Manipulate, no. I am trying to get everyone to see that the reporting of this incident, and the reaction to it, is a negative, harmful aspect of the MeToo movement; and that if the MeToo movement wants to leave a positive legacy, it needs to move beyond this phase and help bring into effect the systemic changes needed in workplaces and law enforcement agencies to prevent this happening in the future.
If you prioritize not hurting other people, then it actually is quite easy. If you prioritize getting laid, no matter what you have to do, then it gets complicated.
If you prioritize sex over not hurting other people, yes. So don’t do that.
If you care about the other person, you won’t make that kind of mistake. It actually, honestly is. that. simple.
Nerd of Redhead,
“That is what I see from your inability to provide any evidence for your case”
As far as I can see it is you and others who are making accusations. So it is up to you to provide the evidence. But the only evidence you have is an account of a sexual encounter by an anonymous person on the Internet. Together with your mantra “Believe the victim”. I have pointed out twice now the true meaning of “Believe the victim” as promoted on this very blog by your host, PZ Myers. That has gone completely ignored.
“At the moment, all I see is WAHHHHHH….I might have to pay attention to a woman.”
Hmmm…seems to me I having been paying plenty of attention to women on this comment section. And I have tried to do this with civilly and respect. I’ll let you be the judge on whether or not I’ve succeeded, because you will anyway. I actually champion women’s causes. It was a great achievement when Julia Guillard became Australia’s first female PM. And great news when New Zealand’s PM, Jacinda Adern, announced yesterday that she is pregnant. But this needs to become the norm, rather than seen as something Extraordinary.
Says the asshole who does nothing but evidenceless assertions, that are dismissed without evidence, which is true skepticism.
You can’t tell if the woman int the case is lying, put the third party evidence that was presented says you are wrong. Less than a 10% chance she is lying. Where is YOUR third party evidence showing women (statistically), lie at a much higher rate? Nada. Claims you can’t tell are dismissed as fuckwittery.
We have your measure, or lack thereof. Someone who we can judge is either a rapist or rape apologist, but in any case despite other claims, is a misogynist.
That is what the evidence your words show.
Shutting the fuck up is always an option. Try it out.
Giliell,
“There are few honest mistakes here and those that happen are only credible as long as the person takes responsibility and does not whine that they’re being held to an unreasonable standard of perfection”
No argument with the first bit right up and including “as long as the person takes responsibility”. But then you ruin it when you imply I’m whining about “an unreasonable standard of perfection”. I am not whining. The demand to be perfect IS an unreasonable standard. It’s what we strive for, but it is unattainable. We are human. We can strive for perfection. We can never achieve it. And we must take this into account when we judge other human beings.
Ogvorbis,
billyjoe @225: “I didn’t say the alleged victim was lying, I said I don’t know. I don’t know if she is telling the truth, telling an exaggerated version of what happened, deliberately lying, innocently got it wrong, or misinterpreted what happened, or various combinations of all of these things”
Ogvorbis: “And yet you are not wondering if Aziz is lying, telling the truth, telling an exaggerated version of what happened, deliberately lying, innocently got it wrong, or misinterpreted what happened, or various combinations of all of these things. You only wonder about the woman involved”
You must have missed the very next sentence where I said this:
BillyJoe: “I also don’t know if the alleged perpetrator was lying, telling the truth, innocently got it wrong, deliberately minimizing what happened, etc etc etc. I don’t know.”
billyjoe @254:
What systemic changes in workplaces and law enforcement would prevent the sort of sexual assault described by Grace? This didn’t happen at work and there’s no indication that Grace is intending to file charges against Ansari.
Tethys,
“Nobody accidentaly commits sexual assault, period”
Mostly that is the case. Certainly in clear cases of sexual assault. I agree. However, it is possible to have bad sex bordering on sexual assault without realising it at the time.
“it sounds to me like billyjoe is working really hard to maintain some personal denial, and has assaulted women”
Assaulted, no. Am I perfect. No, I’ve already said I’m not perfect. Have I occasionally accidentally upset someone. Yes, I admit I’m human. Have I learnt from my mistakes. I hope so.
“My statistic about stranger rape was clearly an FYI. I can only give accurate information”
My apologies. I thought it was a follow up on your previous comment. I thought you were doubling down because, firstly, you didn’t acknowledge my point about the ecological fallacy and, secondly, you went on to quote some more statistics.
Mostly????
Guy, do you even logic?
vivec,
“The fact that you didn’t mean to rape your partner doesn’t un-rape them.”
You seem to have a rather broad your definition of the word “rape”.
That’s fine, depending on how broad your definition is. It can be spread so broad as to become almost meaningless. If you are going to call what Aziz Ansari did rape (even accepting what Grace said about the sexual encounter), then what word are you going to use to describe someone who breaks into a woman’s home and forces himself on her. What word will you use to describe what Harvey Weinstein did.
@263
Rape.
That some breaches of consent are more blatant and forceful than others is a difference of degree, not kind.
“If you are going to call that one drop of liquid on the floor water, what word are you going to call that liquid in niagra falls? What word will you use to describe the liquid in the Atlantic ocean?”
vucodlak,
Okay, I should have been more charitable and read single quotes rather than double quotes. Obviously you weren’t quoting the alleged perpetrator directly. But, we have a real problem when we paraphrase what people have said rather than directly quoting what they actually said. And we have a real problem when we impugn motives that we cannot know that they actually have.
Likewise when you speculate about my possible past and future actions. But I have addressed that in one of my previous comments, so I won’t repeat it here.
Anything that isn’t CCC is RAPE. Menz don’t like the rape word, even if that is what they do. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3
Show me I am wrong with links to third party evidence, not just your automatically dismissed evidenceless words.
@billyjoe
I’ll bite, what misrepresentations and unjustified accusations? Give me your best two but I want things in return. Basic one on one primate politics.
With respect to the interaction between Aziz and Grace, why should your fear of what you don’t know matter to me or anyone else here? We all have our own reasons for acting the way we are but I have yet to see anyone here give me a reason to change my behavior.
I’m here because I see some very fear driven people try to apply pressure to end the conversation about Grace’s account of the interaction with Aziz. I suspect they see themselves in Aziz because I do too and I’ve been working on repairing the damage culture and choices left behind. I’ve been asking you and them for the only thing that matters, the things Grace said that are a problem.
I’m sure you worked hard from your perspective but your work is for your politics and that’s part of what I mean by doing your work. They are doing social work for themselves and the people they choose to. So you worked hard, yay? I’ve let people here change my behavior through observation and introspection and I’m not impressed with what I’ve seen.
You can do the same as them in theory but that requires attaching objects to those fears of yours. I’ve seen you say that this is a harmful aspect of the movement but how can I believe that if you are so resistant to providing copies of what people are saying that bothers you?
It’s amazing how specific the behavior is. If you want an example from another person go look at hookflash whining about the use of “rapist talk”. Literally not one example to attach to their outrage. All I see is the pressure of naked assertion and characterization and I like seeing the discussion so it’s been an easy conflict to justify on my end.
Public criticism is manipulation. As is persuasion, and rhetorical structure…we are political creatures. You suck at it.
I should specify, you suck at the persuasion billyjoe. In groups with others the sort of criticism you participate in makes people like Grace less likely to speak up.
That’s why I’m here.
Nerd of Redhead,
“Shutting the fuck up is always an option. Try it out.”
Meanwhile everyone is still misrepresenting what I’ve said, impugning motives I don’t have , and speculating about my past and possible future actions!
Perhaps they could take your advice as well.
Isilzha Mir,
“What systemic changes in workplaces and law enforcement would prevent the sort of sexual assault described by Grace?…This didn’t happen at work…”
I’m not talking about Grace.
And, again, I disagree that it was sexual assault. In my opinion, and the opinion of many outside of this blog, that it was bad sex bordering on sexual assault if you take everything Grace said at face value.
But that incident has been an unnecessary distraction from the real issue.
Brony,
“In groups with others the sort of criticism you participate in makes people like Grace less likely to speak up”
If people like Grace decide to speak up that is their judgement call. To me it’s just a distraction form the real issues that the MeToo movement should or could be all about. What point is there to publicising a case of bad sex or, at worst (taking everything she said at face value) borderline sexual assault It just seems to be diluting the offensivenes of people such as Harvey Weinstein. And it’s now creating a backlash against MeToo, and causing fellow feminist to gang up against each other.
reitpluim.
“Mostly????”
Yes, if you have a broad enough definition of what constitutes sexual assault visa a vis bad sex,then, yes, someone is going to commit your broad definition of sexual assault without realising it.
@271
Cool, I’m all about deep rifts. A feminist that thinks that a man repeatedly trying to engage in sex with a non-consenting woman is anything but sexual assault is no ally of mine, and I’m glad to do without them.
Also, in-fighting between feminists isn’t a bad thing. I am very fine with, for example, telling TERFs to go fuck themselves.
vivec,
BillyJoe: “If you are going to call what Aziz Ansari did rape (even accepting what Grace said about the sexual encounter), then what word are you going to use to describe someone who breaks into a woman’s home and forces himself on her. What word will you use to describe what Harvey Weinstein did”
vivec: “Rape. That some breaches of consent are more blatant and forceful than others is a difference of degree, not kind”
But don’t you see the problem here? If you are going to say what Harvey Weinstein did is rape, and you are going to say what Aziz Ansari did is rape, you are ignoring that “difference in degree”. But, worst than that, you are expanding the definition of what constitutes rape to make it almost meaningless whilst diluting the severity of what Harvey Weinstein did.
@274
How so? They’re both. Nonconsensual sexual contact.
That one was worse doesn’t make them not rape. Refusing to call what Aziz did “rape” is trivializing what I consider a severe breach of consent.
@billyjoe
From my perspective the metoo movement is about the behavior Aziz displayed. Sexual harassment and assault are boundary violations. Harassment is repeated social pressure, he was very repetitive about breaking boundaries like stated objections to his behavior and intent. Assault involves force and repeatedly he moved her body against her desires.
In the end I’ll let Grace and Aziz inform what I think. But I believe in a society that deals with taking accusations seriously and I am political.
On the other hand, in my opinion, endlessly arguing about the borderline between bad sex and unintended marginal sexual assault, trivialises the MeToo and TimesUp movements, which bravely exposed the clearly atrocious activities of people like Harvey Weinstein.
Bad sex (inept or clumsy partner, no orgasm, wasn’t fun) is not the same as sexual assault or rape (violated consent). You continue to make yourself look like a horrible person by conflating the two.
I’ve had bad sex. It was boring. I didn’t get off. I consented to everything that was happening. It wasn’t rape. Sex is a learned skill. There’s going to be fumbling of the “we tried that and I didn’t like it” variety.
But if your partner says they don’t like something or don’t want to do something, but you keep doing that something you have now violated their consent. That’s no longer bad sex. It’s sexual assault or rape.
This is a very simple concept. People who make it complicated come across as desperately seeking a loophole because past behaviour violated consent and they don’t want too feel like a bad person. And instead they come across looking like an even worse person.
When a woman approached Washington Post and made claims about Roy Moore, WP journalists did not believe the woman as some users here think should be the reflexive reaction. They doubted her because they had good reasons to first investigage and corroborate her account and that is how they found out she was lying about everything. This is not victim blaming. This is basic fucking sanity. When there is an obvious motive to lie, it is even more important to investigate.
Compare that to the type of journalism Katie Way and Babe have done. When I said the story was curious, I did not even know it was this bad. I just could not understand what was the point in reporting the wine type ordered or detailing stupid sexual moves or numerous other nonrelevant details. The writer of this story (Katie Way) is not even a journalist. She is a fucking blogger writing for a tabloid network that has publishing gems in its history such as “revealing where Malia Obama is going to college” and Cambridge’s best bums. Katie Way’s last tweet before this ground-breaking article that she (and some in the media and elsewhere) apparently believes pushed the boundaries of feminism, was: watching dubbed anime is racist.
Setting the issue of credibility aside, Katie Way has done this story in the most irresponsible and amateurish manner and doing that, she has harmed both Grace and Ansari needlessly. Her sloppy and incoherent reporting does really look like revenge porn and leaves the reader with the question of what the hell was that about. She then put a MeToo hashtag on the piece and without even waiting enough for Ansari to respond (they could not lose the opportunity Emmy’s had provided!) published it and let the Internet do its magic. Now this 22-year old amateur blogger gets to write letters to female news anchors and mock their age and makeup and even implicitly call them shabby! God is well alive. It is irony that is dead.
Your brain needs examination if you trust Katie Way and Babe to be truthful and honest brokers of news. This story is tainted and it will only give credit to racists (who are framing it as brown man hunting for white girls) and the MRA. Some media (curiously both from right and left. Even National Review takes the reported story as totally true) and some people here treat Katie Way’s account of what happened as holy Quran. Why exactly? What are her credentials (except being a white young millenial maybe?) that warrants this level of acceptance? If Grace was not anonymous, it did not matter as much. Others could have talked to her or investigated and we would have a more realistic picture of what happened. The very act of choosing to keep her source anonymous gives me enough reason to doubt it seriously and anyone with an ounce of respect for truth and journalistic integrity should do the same.
Since some people here have serious understanding problem, I repeat: What I am expressing doubts about is not Grace’s account of what happened. It is Katie Way’s account of what Grace said happened.
This is why I have become quite reluctant to quote from that stupid piece and “analyze” it. I regret that I even tried ealier in this thread. Because it really feels like going through dirty underwear of other people. The sad thing is there was no need for any of this. This report could have been done in a responsible and professional manner. But then, who wants to do the boring and thankless job of real investigative journalism when you can join “the revolution” by writing prurient bullshit like this.
Bycott him. Do not associate with him. Whatever. But if you do not think this kind of journalism (actually tabloidism) has serious problems that needs to be faced sooner or later, you do not get to complain about the sorry state of journalism in this day and age. You are part of the problem.
@billyjoe
You can leave any time. I want to see the argument. Notice how it’s you acting tired but you want us to stop?
Clear dominance behavior. You can keep on with that in a political struggle of course, but so can we. Do what you will. I’ll just enjoy figuring out how many kinds of ways there are respond and still let people have the talk.
raaak:
Such sanctimony!
https://slate.com/culture/2018/01/a-deep-dive-into-the-archives-of-babe-net-after-its-bombshell-piece-on-aziz-ansari.html
—
billyjoe:
A canonical example of concern trolling.
@John Morales,
Wow! Saying that tabloidism is not a serious thing has now become a sign of elitism? Talk about low bars!
Raak: it’s a cheeky magazine for young women — a very, very small fish in a huge pond of tabloid journalism. If you want to decry that, perhaps target the bigger fish.
Any port in a storm, eh?
(Your caveats and justifications don’t hide the inchoate nature of your objection)
PS
I can see why you seek to discount the account, in your own mind — but your reasons are not compelling.
That first case is relevant to whether he had more interest in her as a person or as a fuck-toy; other items such as the hasty nature of his departure are also not irrelevant to other aspects of the story.
(You really don’t follow the allegorical allusiveness?)
W
You have presented nothing to make me change my mind, which requires you to either prove your points with outside evidence, or shut the fuck up. All can put up or shut the fuck. up.
That requires honesty and integrity. Which you don’t have…..
Any further post are you tacitly acknowledging you are a liar and bullshitter, which is what I expect from you…..
@John Morales,
Okay. How did you get the idea that he looked at her as a fucktoy or whatever? Was it by any other source than Ms.Way? The question is simple. How much do you trust her, and why?
My gut feeling tends to agree with you about that one point you are trying to score given all the circumstances. If that is the most you are willing to claim, then fine.
You do not say how much you trust Ms.Way and her professionalism and this specific story she has produced. Maybe if you did that, we would have a better understanding of where we agree and disagree.
raaak, are you familiar with the concept of consilience?
Frankly, I personally think it’s far easier to believe the story — which is a narrative rather than a dispassionate report — than to disbelieve it. Nothing much more has been heard from the principals.
—
As the OP has it, I think it should be a salutary reminder to other men.
@John Morales,
No, I was not. I googled it and I disagree. Forgive my rushed research into this word. But the Wikipedia article reads:
We only have one anonymous source, one amateur blogger and an statement that says: by all indications everything was consensual. I do not call this unrelated and independent sources.
I am not saying the story is a lie. I never said that. However the case against Ansari can vary wildly depending on how truthful and credible you believe the story was. It can vary from: she didn’t like the sex to she wanted to use him to he was inappropriate to he is a rapist and anything in between.
Sorry Raak, the woman is >90% credible until YOU provide evdence otherwise.
Put up or shut the fuck up if you have honesty and integrity.
I suspect you have neither….
@ billyjoe, #265
So, you’re saying I must only quote passages directly, despite this having been done several times in this very thread, including BY YOU IN THE VERY COMMENT I WAS REPLYING TO EARLIER, without interpreting them in any way with regard to Ansari’s actions, or to the known behavior of abusers? Hmm.
Well, here is a direct and unaltered quote from the not-terribly-good 1988 buddy-cop movie “Feds,” spoken by a character identified only as Girl Punk (played, so far as I can tell, by Barbara C. Adside), which I feel is an appropriate response to your, sorry, our problem:
Now, I’m not such a stickler for interpretation as some people I could name, so I’ll leave such weighty matters as “What kind of shit?” and “How big a tube?” up to you.
I do hope that lives up to your exacting standards.
@ raaak, #279
A very short list of things ‘real, serious journalists’ have given us:
1.) The Iraq War, pushed by that most serious of serious journalism outlets The New York Times
2.) Endless hero-worshipping stories that always give the police and military the benefit of every doubt, even when their actions are clearly beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior
3.) An endless stream of ‘balanced reporting,’ a.k.a. both-siderism about a whole host of issues that most assuredly do not have two equally valid sides, such as climate change and whether or not black people deserve human rights, culminating in their crowning achievement:
4.) The election of President Donald Trump
All of these items are the work of ‘real’ journalists with credentials out the wazoo. Color me unimpressed by the ‘she doesn’t have credentials!’ argument. Her credentials are irrelevant. Her age is irrelevant. Who she writes for is isn’t even particularly relevant, given the garbage that passes muster in ‘real’ journalism.
If you have some proof that Katie Way is lying, then by all means share it.
@vucodlak
Where did I say she was lying? I said she is not 1) credible and 2) has done this story in irresponsible manner. I do not agree with you about the second part and that’s another discussion.
@Nerd of Redhead
90%? How did you get that number?
raaak,
“Where did I say she was lying?”
Join the club. If you’re not totally with them, you’re totally against them, and then anything goes.
They misquote you, quote you out of context, cherry pick your quotes, tell you you’ve said things which you clearly have not said, impugn motives, presume to tell you what you are thinking, use logical fallacies, tell you what you are probably guilty of or will be guilty of in the future, and swear a lot as they’re doing all these things. Not that the swearing bothers me.
All the while they believe a blogger when she writes an account related to her by an anonymous alleged victim about what sounds, at the very worst, marginal sexual assault but most likely just bad sex, then call it rape and label anyone who quite reasonably disagrees with their assessment, enablers of rape culture together with a string of expletives. Not that the expletives worry me.
Yes, curiously, is not a case of “believe the victim” it’s a case of “believe the blogger who writes about what an anonymous victim believes” while, in any case, ignoring the actual meaning of the phrase “believe the victim” linked to approvingly by their host PZ Myers, even after having their attention drawn to it a second time.
Why would you simply not believe the women’s story as written? It has been confirmed by both parties, and yet we have yet another commenter going on about credibility and how can we know if it’s true, yadda, yadda, yadda. We have zero evidence that her story is false, yet for some mysterious reason there seems to be an endless supply of people who need to defend the honor of men who won’t take no for an answer.
Despite all the known facts these jokers decide they themselves are the authority on the matter, and question the credibility and motivations of the victim. Do ya’ll think women get some sort of awards and accolades for reporting assault? Is there some secret cabal of powerful people who pay bounties for this?
I wrote like a very long comment to explain why I HAVE MY DOUBTS ABOUT THE JOURNALISM (if it can be called that). Until you write something that shows you have actually read it, please don’t respond to it. What is the point anyway?
I read the long winded nitpicking over the journalist, thus the question. By what logic are you leaping to the conclusion that any of it is false, especially since Aziz confirmed it? Why not believe the story? What do you think anyone has to gain by making this incident public?
Tethys,
“Aziz confirmed it”
No, he did not.
Please go back and read my reply the last time someone made this claim.
I quoted the totality of what Aziz has said about this incident:
– the text message he sent Grace the next morning.
– the text message in reply to Grace after she told him how she felt the previous night.
– the media statement after the accusation went public.
I also invited anyone to add to this if they could find anything else he said about the alleged assault. No one replied.
In none of hese communications does Aziz confirm the details of what Grace alleged took place.
And now here is the claim again. In-replied to last time and simply repeated again.
I still see no credible reason to disbelieve the story. Deflecting the question a second time does make me question your credibility and reasoning skills. Why is your invented scenario of lying women the one you’ve decided to believe, sans evidence?
@Tethys,
Well, it is not a binary right/wrong verdict. Is it? I guess you like everyone else fall somewhere in the spectrum of bad sex on one end and rape on the other. The problem is not that there is such a spectrum. The problem is its large variance. This is a direct consequence of the way the story was disclosed. I think this was at least partially intentional. The story was meant to be a click-bait and became a successful one too.
People are already trying to doxx Grace. I sincerely hope they fail in that effort. But again, I wonder if Ms.Way even gave 2 seconds of thought to all the potential problems she can create for her source. I seriously doubt it. If anything she is putting her in harm’s way by her irresponsible behavior. But hey, at least it generates a few more clicks and more ad revenue which will surely go to support “the revolution”. So I guess it is alright.
If you’ve read the OP it’s clear that ‘Grace’ is not being outed against her wishes by Ms. Way. so your objections again seem to be entirely fictional. Women are fully aware that making their sexual assault public often leads to backlash and doxxing. It’s called misogyny.
Tethys,
“Why is your invented scenario of lying women the one you’ve decided to believe..”
That is your invention.
I have never said that I believe Grace was lying.
I have specifically said that I don’t know whether she is lying or telling the truth.
In fact, I’ve said it repeatedly.
Maybe you should get yourself a pair of glasses so can actually see what’s written.
Billyjoe
–
Bull-fucking-shit
You are claiming without any good evidence that “don’t put things into people’s orifices without being sure they want this” is some unreasonable “perfection”. This is why you are whining. You are literally claiming that this is too hard to do, which is why people suspect that indeed you have engaged in such behavior.
All I see is the whining of scared children. It’s not enough that they have chosen to avoid the sadly common boundary violations physical and social. Violations of the same kind as other examples called to attention by the metoo movement. No we have to avoid them too or they’re gonna have a bad case of the sads.
I have bag of tiny violins. Does anyone want one?
No, I saw that. How many words have you devoted to claiming she is lying? How many words have you devoted to claiming he is lying? Tossing in one sentence of agnosticism does not really balance a whole thread of ‘she be lying.’ Okay, to be fair, you are not using the word, or any permutation of the actual word, ‘lie’. But you are stating that you do not think her oral evidence of the episode is honest, truthful, or reliable.
And we finally come back to my original prediction(@5): “The women won’t be believed”.
It’s taken c.300 comments to openly confirm the obvious, namely, the rape fans simply won’t assign any creditability to a woman’s claims.
blf,
Your prediction failed.
There have been no “rape fans” on this comment section.
There has been no one who doesn’t accept the phrase “believe the victim”.
The problem is that most people commenting here don’t even understand what that phrase means. PZ Myers provided a link a couple of weeks ago to an article which explains what “believe the victim” means. The phrase is obviously shorthand and the explanation is longhand, but you owe it to yourself to know what you’re talking about. I have posted the link twice now and quoted extensively from that link. So far I’ve had absolute silence on both occasions. So, now it’s your turn. Just look upstream in this thread (if you can’t find it, I will repost it, provided you promise to comment)
And If you do read the article, and understand what it says, you will understand why I said that your prediction failed.
billyjoe
We have totally failed.
We are not the Commentariat you are looking for.
Maybe you should go away?
Gileill,
Come on, your position regarding perfection is ridiculous on its face.
It’s even worse than I have already indicated.
Consider what you’re saying when you demand perfection in sexual relationships. Not only are you saying that it is possible to abide by the rules enumerated in the CCC totally and completely on every single occasion during your entire life, you are saying that this is possible for every single person; and you’re saying this is possible by every single person from the very first sexual encounter.
Perhaps we should do away with apprenticeships in the trades, because everyone should be perfectly able to make a perfect chair on their very first attempt.
Experience obviously counts for nothing!
I mean, this line of discussion is so ridiculous, I’m surprised even you supporters here haven’t given you curry for even bringing it up. Let alone doubling and tripling down on it.
Ogvorbis,
We call that a notapology – the apology you make for getting it wrong, whilst still claiming you were correct all along.
You quoted the comments I made about Grace’s account and claimed I did not make the same comments about Aziz’ account. So I posted the very next sentence after the one you quoted where I did just that, and now you say I haven’t commented about Aziz’ account as much as I have about Grace’s account. Well, I wonder why that might be? I dunno, maybe it’s got something to do with this comment section being largely about “believe the victim”?
Anyway, at least you did apologise, which is more than anyone else seems inclined to do.
Is something like covefe?
Brony,
One day you are actually going to comment about what people have said, rather than what they haven’t said. Today is obviously not that day.
Chigau,
“Maybe you should go away?”
Maybe you should go away and read that link.
It comes highly recommended by your host PZ Myers.
Come on, be the first to read and comment on the meaning of “believe the victim”.
Believe the victim is a three word sentence. It is not shorthand for some abstract concept, its a simple prime directive. I’m simply not going to believe anyone capable of commenting on a blog can possibly misunderstand the meaning of such a simple sentence.
FYI
HTML lesson
Doing this
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
<b>bold</b>
bold
<i>italic</i>
italic
Using any of these will make your comments containing quotes from other commenters easier to understand. They will not help your comments make sense.
@ billyjoe, #307
Christ on a cracker. With mayo.
CCC is not like building a great chair, or forging a flawless sword. It’s like communicating, because that’s exactly what it is. You are obviously capable of communicating. You don’t have to be good at it. You just have to be able to understand simple concepts like ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘stop that.’ Then you just have to take it one little step further, and respect the person you’re with when they communicate things like ‘yes’ and ‘no.’
I’m terrible at many forms of interaction. I despise phone calls; how the hell am I supposed to talk to a disembodied voice? I hate striking up conversations with strangers; if I don’t know you, how can I know what to talk about, or even what the rules are? But CCC is so easy. The rules are so simple that even I can grasp them.
“Is this ok?”
“Yes.” –ok, so we do this.
“How about we ____.”
“No.” –ok, so we don’t ____.
My god, I was doing that with my first serious partner, as a horny teenager. I’d certainly never read the link Nerd provided- it didn’t exist back then. I’d never even had a proper sex-ed class. But I still understood how things should be done, because it’s Not. That. Difficult.
This isn’t a matter of mastering some difficult technique. It’s not building the perfect chair. It’s knowing which end of the hammer to hold. It’s simple, basic decency that even frothing-at-the-mouth monster like me can grasp.
Tethys,
“Believe the victim” is a three word sentence. It is not shorthand for some abstract concept, its a simple prime directive”
Of course it’s shorthand.
Actually, I misspoke. The phrase, as used in the article by Adam Lee which PZMyers linked to a few weeks ago, is “believe women”. But, nevermind, it is basically the same thing. It refers to women who report sexual abuse.
But, of course it is shorthand. How can two words encapsulate the entirety of any subject. For a start, it does not even mention sexual abuse (both versions) or women (first version). So there has to be an explanation for what this simple catchphrase actually means. I provided a link to that explanation. Did you read it? Did you disagree? If so, why do you disagree?
“I’m simply not going to believe anyone capable of commenting on a blog can possibly misunderstand the meaning of such a simple sentence”
But that applies to you, Tethys. You have misunderstood the meaning of that phrase. Please read the article and comment on it, because your misunderstanding of that phrase underlies most of your disagreements with what I have been saying In this comment section.
vucodlak,
It seems you are one of those perfect people when it comes to sexual activity with another person. Well, congratulations! But the vast majority of us are humans with human failings. We’re not going to kill, rape, and pillage, but we’re going to make mistakes despite our best intentions. All we can ask is that people do their best and take responsibility for their inevitable failings as human beings. And taking responsibility for your failings means learning from them and doing better next time.
Frankly, I think you’re being disingenuous when you say it is simple to know what your sexual partner wants and doesn’t want. Especially in the case of a casual sexual encounter. Making no errors in judgement would require complete understanding between the two partners. This cannot be the case in any casual encounter, and takes time to develop in a long term relationship. This is not controversial stuff.
At this point billy boy, I suggest you simply fuck off. Your obfusction and whingeing about how hard it is not to assault people grew tiresome days ago.
That. is. why. you. ask.
Tethys,
Nice.
Bad language is no substitute for good argument.
But I guess when you don’t have a good argument…
Anyway, this is the blog that PZ Myers linked to a few weeks ago:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2018/01/means-believe-women/#XR4HRe7ZgD3XGDmj.99
And here are the relevant quotes:
“Women’s testimony shouldn’t be believed without question or exempted from verification. Women are human beings, and human beings sometimes lie or make mistakes. Insofar as it’s possible, we should always scrutinize a claim and determine whether it’s corroborated or disproved by available evidence”
And….
“However, although people sometimes lie, most people are trustworthy most of the time. The vast majority of the time, when someone tells you about something that happened to them, they’re telling the truth…And when one claim is corroborated by others – for example, multiple women accusing the same man of sexual harassment, with no obvious collaboration between them – the probative value of that evidence goes up dramatically. It’s possible that one witness is lying or mistaken; it’s far less likely that many witnesses are lying or mistaken in exactly the same way.”
You can know ignore it for the third time.
My guess is that, if you do respond, you’ll cherry pick the first sentence of the second quote to the exclusion of all the rest. Which of course would mean missing the very point I’ve been making here over the past few days.
Well, billyjoe
It’s amazing how you avoid engaging with the very clear examples that I gave.
Instead you keep whining about some “unreasonable demand of perfection”.
Apparently the very simple rule that you must not penetrate people without their consent is such an example of an “unreasonable standard” for you.
Smells like rapist to me.
I bet you people also demand perfection out of billyjoe like not sticking knives in people and not shoving them off cliffs and not taking money out of their wallets without asking first. How is he supposed to know? He’s not a mind reader! How can he know the rules even after they’re explained to him repeatedly?
Billyjoe is being deliberately stupid and/or deaf. It is trolling technique. If he wants us to change our minds, he is presenting nothing that will cause us to do so. ElevatorGate happened in 2011, and we were arguing with misogynists prior to that.
Crystal Clear Consent is crystal clear.
*rhetorical* Why are some menz afraid treating women as their equals?
I’m just confused why we’re supposed to care about what definition PZ used weeks ago. We’re not PZ and don’t necessarily agree with him on any given topic.
Everyone understands your point, billyjoe – that avoiding sexually assaulting people is an impossible standard of perfection. We just don’t agree with you.
I’m not really sure what the point of continuing this line of conversation is. Everyone but you has made it abundantly clear that we would be completely fine being judged by the standards we’re proposing.
I am completely non-shocked that billy the wanna be rapist had to complain about bad language. His sense of entitlement is so ingrained that he thinks we are now going to debate the meaning of a three word sentence. Believe the victim is a simple directive, same as “Don’t touch that’ or ‘Wear your seatbelt’. It really is that easy, and yet billy has spent days claiming its just so complex and bewildering he can’t be held responsible for keeping his body parts to himself. Apparently they are detachable and rapey.
Giliell,
“Apparently the very simple rule that you must not penetrate people without their consent is such an example of an “unreasonable standard” for you”
I never gave “penetration without consent” as an example of an “unreasonable standard”. In fact, I never said there were any unreasonable standards in the CCC at all. In fact, I specifically agreed with the contents of the CCC.
I said we should strive to follow those guidelines, but that it is unreasonable to demand perfection from fallible human beings. But, if you want to claim perfection with respect to CCC, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do a lot more than just avoid “penetration without consent”. Maybe you need to re-familiarise yourself with that document.
“I smell a rapist”
Thank-you again for the kind words.
In the mean time please read the CCC again.
And please read and comment on the article PZ Myers linked to.
Quoted not only for fucking truth, but also as a revelation to the rape apologists in this thread. Hopefully the revelation catches on.
billyjoe, by what standards would you want to be judged? And if you ever become the victim of sexual assault, by what standards would you want the perpetrator to be judged? I hope the answers to these questions are consistent.
kupo,
“I bet you people also demand perfection out of billyjoe like not sticking knives in people and not shoving them off cliffs”
If you think that’s all you need to do to be perfect, you have a strange (?convenient) definition of perfection.
Like, I totally agree that we should not kill people, but we should not judge too harshly when somebody kills someone a little, because after all, we’re not perfect.
Nerd of Redhead,
“Why are some menz afraid treating women as their equals?”
Thanks for asking that rhetorical question, because it goes to the heart of that article by Adam Lee where he explains the meaning of “believe the victim”/”believe women”.
Women and men should be treated as equals (which,of course, is not to deny that there are statistical differences between them). But, if you hold women to a lower standard than men, you are actually perpetuating that inequality. As the article says, women, like men, are human beings and human beings sometimes lie and make mistakes.
By Billyjoe’s reckoning, only males should not be judged harshly. Women are always liars…..He hasn’t shown otherwise.
And his vain attempts at framing don’t fool those of us used to such lying and bullshitting. We can see the attitude behind the words.
Vivec,
“why we’re supposed to care about what definition PZ used weeks ago.
Why wouldn’t you care about what definition PZMyers uses?
This is his blog. Why are you here if you don’t care what he says?
“We’re not PZ and don’t necessarily agree with him on any given topic.”
Well, that’s a different question.
I didn’t ask you to agree.
I asked you to comment on it.
Apparently you don’t agree, but you haven’t given any reasons why you disagree.
KG,
“Everyone understands your point, billyjoe – that avoiding sexually assaulting people is an impossible standard of perfection”
No, you don’t understand my point, which should be blindingly obvious by now.
Tethys,
“I am completely non-shocked that billy the wanna be rapist had to complain about bad language”
As I said, I don’t care about the bad language. I just think it’s sad that you resort to bad language instead of good argument. It’s also telling that you think “wanna be rapist” is a good substitute for an argument.
“Believe the victim is a simple directive”
No, it’s a catchphrase.
You will never understand anything if you don’t dig behind the catchphrase.
“billy has spent days claiming its just so complex and bewildering”
(I’ve left off the gratuitous ad hominems this time)
Nope, just more than a two or three word catchphrase is capable of encapsulating.
Reitpluim,
“Like, I totally agree that we should not kill people, but we should not judge too harshly when somebody kills someone a little, because after all, we’re not perfect.”
That’s called killing your own argument by showing how vacuous it is
“billyjoe, by what standards would you want to be judged?”
Same as anyone else, which covers you next question as well.
That’s called killing two questions with one answer.
Nerd of Redhead,
“By Billyjoe’s reckoning, only males should not be judged harshly. Women are always liars…..He hasn’t shown otherwise”
What part of “women and men should be treated as equals” did you not understand?
What part of “women, like men, are human beings and human beings sometimes lie and make mistakes” did you not understand?
“And his vain attempts at framing don’t fool those of us used to such lying and bullshitting”
The shoe is on the other foot (see above).
Hey look ,billy also doesn’t understand the basic concepts of logic. . I has BINGO!!
(hint for the hard of thinking..insulting you or telling you to fuck off because your premise is flawed is not an ad hom)
billyjoe, you’ve already indicated you agree with the facts (as indicated by your early comments).
Here is the omphalos of your claim: (@53) “Maybe she was mistaken when she later decided it was sexual assault.” You kinda buried it in there, but that’s the nub.
It is clear that you have a different idea of what constitutes sexual assault to those with whom you imagine you’re “arguing”*. You have made it very evident that you think what was reported does not constitute sexual assault.
Your perseverance at trying to establish the superiority of your belief via argumentation is futile; others aren’t going to change their minds about this any more than you are.
—
* You appeal to the purported weakness of “arguments”, but don’t see their sarcastic nature as communicating anything. You’re being told, in no uncertain terms, what I am here telling you.
Tethys,
You would have a point if you had an argument ;)
No argument + personal attack = ad hominem.
See, I understand perfectly!
billyjoe If “don’t kill” is so easy to you, then why isn’t “don’t rape”? Nobody here is expecting the impossible from their fellow human beings. You’re insisting that it is difficuly, while in fact it is very simple.
*difficult
@billyjoe
Seriously? Not only don’t you provide an example of something of yours that I didn’t respond to, let’s have a gender at your first comment here.
I am responding to you, it just feels bad because your personal conduct sucks including a problem speaking about others and accountability and taking criticism.
You quote nothing. This is useless for going into and article and determining what it connects to. Being useful to abusers by focusing pressure on people already under social pressure who need to talk about how people get pressured into sex is in addition to all of that.
“her pace was slow” is epically insufficient to the seriousness if the topic. I WANT you to show me what you think I should have responded to, in quotes, so I can go back and look to see if I didn’t.
billyjoe @340, your triumph is misplaced.
The argument is implicit, but it’s there, whether or not you are capable of seeing it.
I here lay it out more formally:
1. your premise is flawed
(Corollary: your argument is unsound)
2. insulting you or telling you to fuck off because your premise is flawed is not an ad hom
3. therefore, you don’t understand the basic concepts of logic if you think this is “ad hom”
—
Tethys has your number.
Argh, entitled fuckwit still seems to think I was argueing with his dumb ass when I replied to raak.
I’m primarily here for the comment section – PZ’s only real import to me is as a conversation starter.
That he supports a particular definition of “believe the victim” doesn’t hold any innate weight to me compared to any other person’s opinion.
John,
Like everyone else, instead of an argument against what I said, you misrepresent what I said and attack that. At least no personal attacks so thank you for that.
For example, I have never said any of the following:
“you’ve already indicated you agree with the facts”
No, I said I don’t know if the account given by the alleged victim, in every detail, is true or false (innocently or deliberately exaggerated or embellished). I cannot know, and neither can you.
“[you said] “Maybe she was mistaken when she later decided it was sexual assault.” You kinda buried it in there, but that’s the nub”
I also said ‘maybe she was mistaken when she initially thought it was just bad sex’. Why did you leave that out? I said I don’t know which of those two alternatives is the case. It could be either, we just don’t know.
“It is clear that you have a different idea of what constitutes sexual assault to those with whom you imagine you’re “arguing””
What I said was that, accepting the alleged victim’s account at face value, it was either bad sex or borderline sexual assault. The difference between me and those with whom I’m arguing is that I see bad sex at one end and rape at the other with all gradations in between. They seem to think in black and white, with no shades of grey. It’s like “believe women” or “believe the victim”. No, it doesn’t mean that we one hundred percent believe without question what the women of alleged sexual assault are saying. It means we don’t automatically disbelieve them. Because that’s been the reflexive response for too many for too long. To say that women are the equals of men, we have to treat them as equals, not diminish them by holding them to a lower standard. Women ,like men, are human beings and human beings sometimes lie or make mistakes. Women and men. Both.
“You have made it very evident that you think what was reported does not constitute sexual assault”
I said bad sex or borderline sexual assault. It clearly was not rape, unless you want to broaden the definition of “rape” to make what Aziz did and what Harvey Weinstein did in the same category.
“Your perseverance at trying to establish the superiority of your belief via argumentation is futile; others aren’t going to change their minds about this any more than you are”
I don’t pretend that I can change their minds. At most, I hope some of them will think a little deeper about these issues. But mostly, I’ve been defending myself against continual misrepresentations of what I’m actually saying. They’re trying to give the appearance of winning an argument by attacking what I haven’t said. And, while not offering any arguments against what I’ve actually said, they load on the personal attacks.
“You appeal to the purported weakness of “arguments”, but don’t see their sarcastic nature as communicating anything”
But they’re using their sarcasm against opinions and claims that I haven’t made. That’s not communicating, that’s simply avoiding dealing with the opinions and claims I’ve actually made.
“You’re being told, in no uncertain terms, what I am here telling you”
Yes, but no credit to you for that.
Because what is the point of telling me that I’ve made claims that I haven’t actually made, and then telling me that those claims that I haven’t made are false, and then justifying personal attacks on the basis of those claims I haven’t made.
At least you haven’t done the latter, so thanks for that.
Sorry ASSHOLE, the statistical evidence says the woman is telling the truth, and the man lying. That data has been linked to.
What YOU Need to do, is to take your dismissed assertion outside of YOURSELF, and link to legitimate third party evidence to support your baseless, and hence, dismissed, assertion.
You don’t have the honesty and integrity to do so. We both know that. So further assertions without are prima facie evidence you are a liar and bullshitter, to be dismissed as a fuckwit.
Show me wrong. Link or you do lie and bullshit…..
John,
When you attack an argument your opponent hasn’t made AND you use personal attacks THAT is an ad hominem.
They attacked arguments I didn’t make. I showed them clearly and repeatedly that the arguments they claim I made are not the arguments I actually made. I even quoted what they claim I said and juxtaposed them to quotes of me saying the exact opposite! Then, instead of attacking my actual arguments, they just continued attacking the arguments I clearly showed I didn’t make. And then added personal attacks.
That constitutes ad hominem in any language.
Personal attacks whilst not addressing the argument constitutes an ad hominem.
Nerd of Redhead,
“Sorry [expletive deleted] the statistical evidence says the woman is telling the truth, and the man lying”
You are misusing statistics.
Statistics apply to groups.
You cannot apply statistics to individuals.
This is the ecological fallacy.
I’ve esplained this all before.
“What YOU Need to do, is…link to legitimate third party evidence to support your [baseless and dismissed assertion deleted] assertion”
I did that the first time and the second time.
You simply ignored it.
Here it is again: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy
Feel free to ignore it a third time.
“You don’t have the honesty and integrity to do so. We both know that. So further assertions without are prima facie evidence you are a liar and bullshitter, to be dismissed as a [expletive deleted]”
So, seeing as I have done so three times now…
billyjoe:
Your very first comment belies that — only now do you appeal to epistemic uncertainty, rather than work with a routine provisional belief. It’s a very mundane and a very plausible account which you implicitly gave provisional belief.
Think how that comes across.
You’re here to help. Not deep thinkers, they, about these issues.
Sexual assault considerations need more nuance, not less.
Somehow, your efforts are being met with repugnance, and you’re being given personal opinions about you, based purely on what you have written. This should not bewilder you.
Yes, that you indulge your need to defend yourself is voluminously evident.
Some journey. You started out excusing Aziz, now you’re excusing yourself and veering into abstruse gradations where things may or may not be “bad sex or borderline sexual assault”.
That very quotation is yet another example informative towards others’ perception of your mindset and therefore your (potential) functional nature.
Perhaps a simple rule is that, if you have to make a cogitative case whether something may or may not be sexual assault, then it very probably is. So, either don’t or clarify.
Precautionary principle. A simple rule that obviates the very problems you raise.
Vivec,
“I’m primarily here for the comment section – PZ’s only real import to me is as a conversation starter.”
Fine. No problems.
Except that you still haven’t explained why you think that explanation of “believe the victim” or “believe women” is wrong.
It is the basis our disagreement here and you seem happy to not address it.
billyjoe:
You are confused.
argumentum ad hominem has nothing to do with attacking arguments you haven’t made (that’s the straw dummy fallacy) or with insults, it’s about purportedly rebutting an argument not by arguing its merits, but its maker’s.
Being told your argument has a flawed premise can’t be a form of that fallacy.
John,
“Your very first comment belies that”
Here is my first comment:
“The problem was pacing. His pace was fast. Her pace was slow. Bad mismatch. This was never going to end well”
So, when I read the alleged victim’s account, my reflex reaction was not “to disbelieve it” (that’s part of the explanation of the catchphrase “believe the victim”). In that spirit, I tried to understand what was going on. The above was my conclusion, and it was actually based on what the alleged victim said in her own account of what happened (or what the blogger claimed she said and, of course, I don’t reflexly disbelieve her either). Several times the alleged victim expressed displeasure at the speed of which things were progressing. Too fast for her.
Of course, “not reflexly disbelieving” the alleged victim’s account is not the same a “believing one hundred percent in every detail” that the account is true. Women are human beings, and human being occasional lie or make mistakes.
“only now do you appeal to epistemic uncertainty”
Only now?
I’ve been repeating this point ad nauseam almost from the start.
No, not explicitly in my very first comment. But, if you want to find fault with me not reflexly disbelieving the alleged victims account, I will happily plead guilty.
“Somehow, your efforts are being met with repugnance, and you’re being given personal opinions about you, based purely on what you have written. This should not bewilder you”
I cannot be held responsible for their personal attacks. Their’s is a black and white world without nuance. If I’m not totally with them, I’m totally against them, and, on that basis, they justify to themselves the personal attacks.
“You started out excusing Aziz”
Thanks for the mischaracterisation. Never did that in any way shape or form. That’s just part of the false narrative about me that the lack and white no nuance brigade has created because I had the good sense not to totally and completely fall into agreement with their simplistic view of the world and human nature.
“now you’re excusing yourself, and veering into abstruse gradations where things may or may not be “bad sex or borderline sexual assault”.
Excusing myself? Where have I excused myself? I stick by everything I’ve said in this thread. I have no need to excuse myself for anything I’ve said.
Abstruse gradations? Do you seriously think human behaviour is either good or bad without gradation. Sex can be bad. Sex can constitute assault. Are you seriously saying there can be no grey area, where it can be difficult to say if it was bad sex or sexual assault?
“Perhaps a simple rule is that, if you have to make a cogitative case whether something may or may not be sexual assault, then it very probably is”
My opinion – accepting the alleged victim’s account at face value – was that it is bad sex bordering on sexual assault. You want me to go one step further and call it sexual assault. Cute. So, on that basis, those who call it sexual assault should go one step further and call it rape. Wait…some have actually taken that step! So, what’s the next? Maybe just lump Aziz in with Harvey Weinstein and be done with it. Harvey would certainly not mind.
I hope you see the fallacy of what you are proposing
John,
The ad hominem fallacy is attacking the person rather than his arguments.
We are simply disagreeing on whether or not they have attacked my arguments.
In my opinion, they haven’t attacked my arguments at all. They been busily attacking arguments I haven’t made, spiced with gratuitous personal attacks. When I clearly outlayed my arguments and contrasted them with the arguments they have been busily attacking, they continued with the personal attacks. At this stage, it’s nothing more than ad hominem.
Also, ad hominem can be justified only if the charges about the person’s character have some basis in fact. Clearly they do not have any facts upon which they could base their claims of me being a rapist.
@ billyjoe
From #316
Actually, I’m a terrible human being. I’ve never made a secret of that fact. But since you seem to have almost no reading comprehension skills, I’ll say it again- I’m a terrible human being who has done terrible things. I still manage to respect consent.
From #329
The only person going on and on about CCC requiring perfection here is you.
From #331
If a man made the same anonymous claims as Grace, in the same way, against the same person, I would take them just as seriously. In other words, that article you’re been flogging ceaselessly isn’t the gotcha you seem to think it is. Nor does it justify your endless ‘[women] be lyin’ shtick.
Yeah, that’s right, even though you don’t specifically use the word “liar,” that’s still clearly the argument you’re pushing.
From #334
That you’re a troll who will never stop is entirely obvious, as is the threat you pose to others.
From #335
Being good at trolling is not the same thing as being good at arguing. This community has gone out of its way to extend you the benefit of the doubt, but you’re clearly not arguing in good faith.
You deliberately misconstrue the statements of others with regards to CCC. You continually imply that the victim (or the reporter) is a liar, being careful not to use the actual word so you can taunt people like a child holding their hand an inch from someone’s face and going “ha ha I’m not touching you.” You engage in tone-trolling in one sentence, then claim you aren’t in the next (or sometimes you reverse the order, as in the quote above).
You provoke arguments without any intention of engaging in them honestly. Case in point- the discussion of CCC, which you insist requires perfect people to be feasible. I’m sure you’ll deny that you’ve ever claimed that, even though I quoted one such instance at the beginning of this comment. You aren’t doing this because you’ve forgotten what you’ve said. You being deliberately dishonest, in an attempt to gaslight the people here. Not very effective in a forum like this, where people can just scroll up to see what you’ve said.
It’s not much of a stretch to imagine you engage in this behavior in meatspace. Here it’s just trolling, but there it is abuse.
People are accusing you of disgusting behavior because you’ve behaved in a disgusting manner here. You make of show of being ‘polite’ and ‘reasonable,’ but your motives are revealed in certain patterns that show in your comments. You’re manipulative and glib. You’re constantly pushing boundaries, then (attempting to) shame people for their negative reactions to this behavior.
You’re an abuser.
billyjoe
Not penetrating other people without their consent is not demanding perfection. It is the lowest possible bar. Nobody accidentally penetrates another person.
I helped writing it.
I specifically named “not penetrating people without consent” several times in the comments you replied to. So what is it? Is your attention span lower than that of a squirrel at wholefoods or did you decide you wanted to dishonestly engage in a strawman?
I never talked about “perfection”, you did, which is why I don’t need to make any evaluations of my own behaviour with regards to “perfection”.
Besides, we’re quite happy with imposing standards on people’s behaviour. If I run a stop sign and the police catch me they don’t give a toss about the 999 times I didn’t run it.
Even if I didn’t endanger anybody and no harm was done, I am guilty and get fined.
Giliell,
I would like to end on a conciliatory note and, to that end, I would like to quote from a link you supplied upstream.
It is from Ijeoma Oluo.
https://theestablishment.co/in-the-midst-of-metoo-what-type-of-man-do-you-want-to-be-328634985fc5
Despite how my comments have been construed – and I accept that I may have been at least partly to blame, even though I have tried my best to be as clear as possible – I agree fully with the above sentiments. These are not the sort of men that men should want to be, and certainly not the sort of men that women want to be with. A happy relationship is one where each partner looks beyond themselves to their partner and, in general, women are more attune to that than men.
Concilitory? Oh no cupcake. I want you and every penis owner who thinks like you to stay over there on the other side of the deeprifts. Quoting the information supplied by Giliell is just more of your sad attempts to dominate this discussion. Women are generally experts on the subject of sexual assault by the time they are 25 or so and have amassed a decade of personal experience. The mansplaining from trolls is utterly useless.
Omg we’re all just being so mean! billyjoe totally agrees with us even though he’s an imperfect being who occasionally gets sleepy and accidentally sticks his body parts into other people. Why can’t we just pat him on the back for agreeing that it’s a good thing not to assault others while still feeling like it’s something he couldn’t ever be expected to live up to?