Rules Of Consent

I've been reading some about the allegations against Aziz Ansari.  I am neither pro or anti Ansari.  I don't watch his shows very often, so I'm not making any points about how we separate art from the artist.  That's a separate issue more aligned with guys like Woody Allen, Kevin Spacey and Roman Polanski.

I've read the account of Ansari's alleged "assault" and I find it troubing.  Basically, Ansari came on sort of fast to a woman he has been talking to over a few days.  They had a date.  They began making out.  The woman wasn't comfortable. When she said stop or slow down, he did, but then a little while later he would try again.  When she asked to leave, he called her a car.  When she texted the next day to say she had been very uncomfortable, he apologized.

This seems a pretty clear case of a bad experience, but not an evil one.  Ansari responded to all of her verbal cues and requests.  He failed to pick up on what she called non-verbal cues.  When he found out she had felt uncomfortable, he was deeply apologetic.

My wife and I have been having many conversations with our sons about the critical importance of consent.  It is the responsibility of every single man to understand what consent is and how to respond to a woman's assent or dissent.  At no point in a sexual encounter does a woman lose the right to say, "no."

The other side of that has to be that a woman must communicate that "no."  Sexual encounters are fraught with all sorts of tension - some of it pleasurable within the context of consent.  The idea that non-verbal cues are easily decipherable is post-hoc guesswork.

It is not unreasonable for the standard to be simply this: men must listen to women, but women must speak.  That makes them equal participants in the decision making process.  The argument that women might be afraid to speak up might be true, but if she says, no, and he forces himself, that's rape.  Does anyone think Ansari raped that woman?

Caitlin Flanagan at the Atlantic says that these allegations almost seem crafted to destroy the credibility of the #metoo movement.  I think her rhetoric gets a little hot, but she's not wrong.

We don't always get what we want out of personal relations.  We have a right not to be abused by those around us, but we don't have a right to expect them to give us everything we want, when we want it.  The encounter between Ansari and his alleger was one where they wanted very different things, but it is not one where he assaulted or abused her.  He listened when she said, no.

That's important.  It has to be.

UPDATE: NY Magazine re-released this article from a couple of years ago.  It's a meandering piece that argues that there is more to sex than consent.  That women ought to expect pleasure from sexual episodes and often they don't get any.  I can't speak to the sexual morays or practices of this generation of young adults, so maybe this is a truly profound problem.  I can say that I had my fair share of ridiculous and unfulfilling sexual encounters when I was single.  I never felt that there was anything pathological about it, but maybe that's just my status as a white guy.  Anyway, the article is an interesting take on some of these questions.